Four

Ahh I just love the look that film has! so vintage looking. The grain and sometimes softness of the photo can add so much character.

AGFA £1 film

Olympus OM-10

Found Film

Finally found my lost film roll! which was actually the second roll of film that I shot using my Olympus om-10 , it's an expired Tesco roll (tesco branded). These are my favourite shots. I'm constantly improving my photography and I think even from my second to third roll I can see improvement. 

Camera: Olympus OM-10

Film: Expired Tesco Colour 400

Why I prefer Film

Digital or Traditional?

I've had experience with both digital and traditional. As a kid I grew up with my dad using film cameras & I loved playing around with disposable cameras , when I started really getting into photography in 2012 at the age of 15/16 I started out with an olympus compact then a Nikon bridge camera and then in 2013 I got a Canon 600D and in 2014 I got a Fujifilm instax 210 (instant/ 'polaroid'). 

For me personally I find that digital is easier and maybe that's because I'm so used to it and still learning the analog ways however don't get me wrong , it's difficult using the manual mode on a DSLR when you're learning. A lot of digital photographers I've seen use a DSLR still haven't mastered the focus on their cameras...

So before you say photography is just pressing 'a button' it isn't & I challenge you to pick up a DSLR or SLR and take a fantastic photo considering composition , lighting & camera settings.

Different camera types

So in digital there's basically three different main options:

Compact
Bridge
DSLR

and for film:

Disposable

Instant

35mm

medium format 

Large format

What I've used:

Compact

Bridge

DSLR

Disposable

Instant

35mm

I absolotely love experimenting with different camera types , for my Final major project in my first year at college I bought a Fujifilm instax which produces 'polaroid' type photo's such as :

Why do I prefer film?
 I personally prefer it because I've learnt more since having my Om-10 (since December) then I have these past 2 + years using digital where photography is concerned. I've learnt more about aperture , shutter & ISO settings than when using digital and knowing more about the settings is such an advantage because it means I actually understand my camera which is important.

I also think that using film encourages you to physically have your prints rather than just storing them in a digital folder and never showing them off or being able to frame them. Keeping everything digitally leaves you the risk of possible corruption and never being able to retrieve them.

When I compare the two, quality wise through photo's I believe that film is much better quality. I love the colours and tones that film produces also I don't believe that there's anything wrong with a little grain in fact I quite like it sometimes. 

Which do you prefer? and if you've only tried one , definitely try the other!

-Ella-

New York Postcard

NEW YORK CITY POSTCARD TWO

-Ella-

New York Postcard

NEW YORK CITY POSTCARD

I love going back on my NYC photographs and re editing them in different ways with new techniques I learn, such as photo montage and as photo montage is a technique I've started to use for one of my college projects I thought I'd give a practice go on some older photo's so I used one of my street documentary style shots with a scanned image from a page from my NYC sketchbook. It's a little different but that's what I like! :) thoughts & opinions are always welcome.

-Ella-


(Blogger seems to of altered the quality of this image on here so for a higher quality version click here)

Dad's film camera , OM1

Spending some time going over my older digital photographs and playing around editing them as I've recently been focusing on taking photo's using my OM10. Here's a photograph I took of my dad's film camera in 2013.

-Ella-

In the trees

Olympus om10

AGFA expired film (200)

Negative Landscape

Olympus om10

AGFA 200 (expired)

Landscape

Olympus om10

AGFA 200 (expired film)

Bitterness in the arts

''It's the person behind the camera that makes the photograph, the camera is just an extension of the photographers ego''

This is a quote I came across on Facebook recently and it really made me think about photography and also the people behind the camera. There can be such a bitter competition between people where their art is concerned whether that's because of the equipment used or just because and it's completely unnecessary. Art is something that is generated from you. From your thoughts, your passions, your feelings, it should be unique to you. Even if you have the most expensive paintbrush in the world , does not mean your painting will be any more magnificent than a painting created with tied up straw. 

In addition

Just because you use the same medium as them does not mean you are in competition. Everybody is entitled to have their own quirks and to flaunt that within their work, it doesn't make you any better because your equipment is more expensive than theirs. It doesn't make you any better or any worse. 

what I'm trying to say is...

Encourage others , encourage their work, admire it and they will often return the favour. 

Also, just because you have more advantages does NOT mean you are better so don't discourage people just to enhance your ego.

-Ella- 

More photo's

Olympus om10

AGFA 200 expired film

-Ella-

Trying out Tumblr

Click - here - to be directed straight to my new Tumblr blog to see some of my photographs :) I'll keep adding more and more of my own images including some of my less recent ones...

Thanks. 

-Ella-

Tumblr & Watermarking.

So I've decided to create a tumblr blog for my photography where I'll be posting my images as often as possible. obviously it's a bit bare looking at the moment as I only decided to create one this morning so I'll post a link up soon once I've uploaded more content So if your interested in solely looking through my images rather than reading through the blog posts then you can check it out soon.

 Also I've been thinking for a while now about having my own watermark for my images to protect them that little bit further so I spent some time on making one this morning which you will start to see in my images. I looked around on Etsy as people have businesses of creating watermarks however I thought surely there's a simple and easy free way to do it and to have it exactly how I want, so I searched on google and found this page here: Create your free watermark

Which tells you step by step on how to make your own which was really fun to do because you can experiment with it in any way you'd like.

As I was looking through some of my older photographs I stumbled across this :

On my flickr account and thought I'd upload it here and talk about it a little.

I took this with my Canon 600D whilst I was sat in the back of the car on a journey to see a relative. It was raining and at the time I was really intrigued with images taken in this kind of situation (shooting whilst in a moving vehicle). So I was playing around with my manual settings on my camera and took this , once I had taken it I went into settings on the camera and put a black & white grain filter on it and voila!

What I was really pleased with about this photo is the eerie atmosphere it has. It looks very ghost like and mysterious and it can also be thought provoking. I love that this kind of work is so opinionated too so...

What do you think?

-Ella-

Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas everyone! I was determined to do another blog post before Christmas but life just took over and I didn't have the time so here's just a quick one.

The more and more research I was doing for college looking through photographers work the more I found I was leaning towards the more traditional route and decided I wanted to get hold on an Analogue film camera which is something I have wanted for a few years now. 

I was lucky enough to receive an Olympus om10 film camera for Christmas along with 12 rolls of expired film , the oldest being from 1961 which I simply cannot wait to use. 

I contemplated doing the project 365 in the new year, but realistically I know it's something I'd struggle to complete however I have decided to make it a new years resolution to take more and more photo's and to experiment more with my film camera.

This morning I loaded my camera with a 36 exposure AGFA colour film (expired on 06/2005) , I look forward to seeing the results and blogging them!

Merry Christmas!

-Ella-

Why did I start photography?

I'll start with a brief 'history' of me and photography

So I realised I haven't really touched on this subject very much and thought it could possibly be interesting to talk about and it's a question sometimes asked. My earliest influence where photography is concerned is my dad. My dad has been taking photographs for years and he is great at it too. I guess you could say I inherited the photography bug. My earliest memories of taking photographs is with disposable cameras, I remember being a bridesmaid for a wedding when I was about 7 and I was given one to take photo's throughout the reception and I just thought it was the greatest thing ever running around trying to take quick photo's (which obviously were not very good however I loved it). I remember feeling the excitement afterwards wanting to get them processed to see how they turned out, it's the same feeling I get now when I develop my own black and white films or send my colour ones off to a photographic lab. It's a thrill of anticipation. 

When I was younger I also remember asking for a Bratz camera for Christmas (there is an awful existing photo of me holding it with a friend from my younger years both posing) I think it was a battery operated one and I also used disposable cameras taking wonky photo's around the house too from a young age. So when I say I've been taking pictures for a while, I have and I guess in a sense everyone else has too. Through my early teen's I always took photo's with my phone's despite the cameras on them being terrible , I just liked to take a lot of photo's. I remember often looking at the sun on the walk back from school and how it cast long dark shadows of the tree's and highlighting the autumnal leaves and thinking it would be a fantastic photograph. It was thoughts like that which triggered the idea that maybe I could potentially take photographs like that regularly but with a better camera.

2011 I asked for a compact camera for Christmas, a red Olympus camera. This was then my own first camera which I loved. I started having more of a creative approach to photography capturing things like Butterfly's and anything else I found. My fondness for taking photo's grew a lot and I started to realise it was something I could maybe do. Summer 2012 I bought myself my first Bridge camera which is quite a step up from a compact one. It was around this time that every Tom , Dick & Harry started to get bridge cameras too and went through a 'photography phase' but I didn't want what I was creating to just be a phase. So I was constantly taking pictures from alternative perspectives always challenging myself to improve my skills. 

2012 was also the year I had 2 of my images in the local chronicle which I was ecstatic about, it was the greatest feeling ever logging onto Facebook to have friends message me saying they've seen my photo's in the Crewe Chronicle newspaper. That's when I knew I was set in a potential career choice, photography was what I wanted to do.

Since then I have started a college course, BTEC Level 3 Photography which I am currently in my second year of. In my last 2 years of high school I attended an after school Photography class which prepared me a lot for College and also helped me create a portfolio which secured my place on the course. 

I started photography because I got enjoyment from it. I loved the excitement from seeing my images after I took them and being able to show people pictures of things they have seen so many times but not in the perspective I can show through my imagery. Photography also really opens your eyes to really see what is right in front of you, it helps you appreciate the most simplest yet most beautiful things we see every day. It's my way of connecting with people. For anyone who has read this far I'm going to be really cliché and finish up by saying;

It's far much more than just pressing the shutter.

-Ella-

New York State Of Mind

I've been so busy recently with projects in college and trying to meet deadlines that I've been neglecting my blog so I apologise !

Recently I've been experimenting more with double exposure images and I've also re discovered my love for black and white images. So you'll probably notice more and more black & white photograph's as I write & shoot more.

''When you photograph people in colour, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls''- Ted Grant

One of my favourite photo related quotes.

Photograph of Danny layered with another one of my images, from New York City.

-Ella-

Pressed Light

ƒ/4.5

1/60

ISO:125

Here's another one of my images for a current project of mine called 'Light & Time'. There was a perfect glimpse of light shining through my window so I decided to make the most of it by placing different objects , that to me represent time (& possibly light) , directly underneath. I decided to put down a pressed flower of mine which has aged because to me it symbolises time and how time ages & changes things in different ways. 

I leaned the rose against the book spine to elevate it slightly to create the shadows underneath the flower to create more depth.

-Ella-

Light & Time

Light & Time , what a perfectly titled project now that it's Autumn!.

 My favourite thing about this time of the year is the light (especially when it's highlighting all of the beautiful coloured leaves that quickly surround us). It's my favourite time of year to photograph so here are some of my image's from this exciting new project.

ƒ/5.0

1/60

ISO:100

ƒ/5.0

1/60

ISO:100

                              

ƒ/4.5

1/60

ISO:125

You might be thinking that these photograph's are all a bit 'mismatched' and you'd be right in thinking so. My first shoot for this project I decided to photograph various things that relate to both or either Light & Time and that may be the only link between the different photographs but that's the only link they really need. 

Photograph 1:

An image of my hand with a stroke of light. In this image my hand represents the element of time. With time my hand will age.

Photograph 2: 

Time being Autumn in this case, the leaf has fallen because its that 'time' of the year. Taken on the window shelf directly facing the light.

Photograph 3:

An image of an instant photograph capturing a moment of light 'in an instant'.

-Ella-

Double Exposed

I went to Liverpool last week with a Pentax K1000 and a Kodak 36 exposure colour film. It felt so long ago since I last shot with a traditional camera that I was so excited to start shooting. I started taking photograph's as soon as I stepped off the train. I was requested to double expose the images which meant taking 72 photographs overall. 

For those of you who aren't sure what double exposure is where traditional film is concerned , it's loading your camera with film, using the film up , rewinding the film back and loading it back in, so you basically shoot over your images. 

Half way through shooting I felt a little regretful about having to double expose because I was quite pleased with the shots I was getting however I proceeded. 

One of the great things about shooting the old school way is the anticipation of getting back your pictures after they've been developed.

I got them back and I was fairly disappointed with the results. Flicking through the photo's made me wish I had followed my gut instinct and not double expose. Although there was a few I quite liked so here are one or two which didn't turn out so bad. 

-Ella-

This weeks favourites

As mentioned in my previous post it was 2012 that I started becoming more and more familiar with the idea of photography and pursuing it as a passionate interest, I've explored lots of different genres in photography since. Ranging from Landscapes to Still life , the more I have experimented with the more gradually I have found where I am most comfortable (however I do like a good challenge). Recently I have discovered my love for Product photography and Still life photography.

Here are some images from the past week.

ƒ/4.5

1/50

ISO:2000

ƒ/5.0

1/80

ISO:1250

This last image is a photo of a Nikon film camera (without the lens attached), I took the image with my Canon DSLR looking directly towards the mirror which is inside the Nikon body. What I like most amount this photo is that it looks quite unusual, not to everyone's taste.

-Ella-