A Film Photography Adventure

Having started up the Photography club in the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe in October last year, we have only just started to shoot with film as a whole group.

Everyone in the club is now kitted out with old film cameras, left over from the school's days of running photography as a subject.

Taking my first exposure with the Minolta 7000 was quite the intense experience. Hearing the mechanical whirring of the film loader and shutter release working gives off a familiar feel. It's a more tactile and physically engaging process than the current digital environment. One that can't be replicated by shooting with a 21st Centuary DSLR.

The whole process of taking photos with film really makes you slow down and think about the shots you're taking. It becomes more of an art than a way to snap quick photos. Every press of the shutter matters!

I started out with some landscape photography, which is an area I seldom venture into. Generally I prefer a tangeable subject, where it's obvious where the focus of the frame is. Landscape really made me think about the leading lines, rule of thirds, shadows and all the other small tips and tricks often overlooked when you can so easily take hundreds of photos with a digital camera and pick the best one.

I'm fairly sure I spent about 20 minutes setting up and framing a photo of a puddle. Not the most interesting subject, I know, but again it made me slow down and think of the composition and lighting.

Since I had been so careful not to waste my exposures on the film reel, I had gotten through the weekend having only taken about 6 photos. I thought it'd be weeks before I was ready to develop the film, but then came wildlife photography...

As you would know if you've seen my portfolio, wildlife is one of my favourite subject areas of photography. Camping out in the woods for hours at a time, to capture the perfect shot of a deer passing by, it's a surreal experience and an incredibly enjoyable past-time. Well anyway, as I was walking home the following weekend from a walk, I saw what I believe is a female sparrowhawk killing and proceeding to eat another bird. As I was trying to use up the exposures on the film reel, I only had the Minolta to hand. The Sparrowhawk took the other bird just the other side of a bush where it continued to viscously attack its prey. Being unbothered by my pressence, I managed to get no further than 2 feet away, lying on my stomache, arms outstretched trying to get the closest photo I could.

Since the lens I had only went to 200mm, I had no choice but to get up and close with the bird of prey. The autofocus on the Minolta was struggling with the leaves in the bushes, so I had to revert to manually focussing on the hawk.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/8f6e91_b387a1910c9e457ea66a47fc1ba71050/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

After around 15 minutes of lying there, seeing that the Sparrowhawk wasn't going anywhere, I had to make the tough decision to leave her to her supper, having used up another 15-20 exposures on my film on that scene alone.

Fast forward to 2 weeks of stressing over those photos later, I was ready to develop the film. Since I had taken the exposures, I had been thinking of them ever since. What if the developing step didn't go well? What if my photos are ruined? What if the photos weren't in focus? I kept doubting my abilities to properly develop the photos.

Having spent about an hour preparing myself, making sure that I had the timings right for all the chemicals, having them all mixed to the right proportions, I was ready.

First step, load the film into the chemical bath. As we don't currently have access to a darkroom, I had to do all of this in a dark bag, making sure to memorize where all of the things I would need would be. This was by far the hardest step in attaining any useable film, loading the film onto the spool itself took about 15 minutes of struggling.

Not being able to see what you're doing when you have 5 different items in a bag and you have to precisely cut, load and lock up the film into the cannister makes for a sweaty mess. It must've taken about 20 minutes before the film was in the cannister and I was confident light wouldn't get it.

Second step, start pouring the chemicals. At this point, timing is critical. I'd calculated the time for the developing fluid to be 11 minutes at 20'C, so using the chart off of Ilford, figured it would be 13 minutes at our room temperature of 18'C. Agitating the film for 10 seconds, every 60 seconds, I started pouring the developing fluid out at 12 minutes 45 seconds, so that I could quickly pour in the stopping solution. Another 10 seconds and it was time to pour that out and replace it with the fixer.

I was done.

All it took now was 3 minutes of long waiting before I could finally reveal whether or not my developing had worked. All the work I had put into the images had come to this one point, where all I had to do was lift the lid on the cannister.

Lifting the film out and squeegeeing off the excess water wash, I could finally see that all my work had not been wasted. There were indeed visible exposures on the reel. I couldn't wait to scan in the negatives to see what they truly looked like. But first, a quick hanging in the bathroom to clear off any extra water...

In order to see the images clearly, I laid the negatives over my laptop screen, with a white background on maximum brightness and, ironically enough took a photo with my digital camera. It was then just a case of importing to lightroom, inverting the images and boosting exposure a little.

Of all the photos taken, this one was the one I was most excited about. The waiting had finally paid off and I could actually see a real photo, taken and developed by me. These photos feel so much more personal due to how much work went into producing them, compared to similar digital shots I've taken.

No matter how good digital cameras become, film will always hold something special over digital. It makes a photo more real, makes you feel more involved in the process of capturing that light and in the end that photo truly is your own work of art.