MA Photography - Time - Colour Papers Development

I used several blue and cyan filters over the lens, to filter out the blue light and some green light.

These are scans of some of my paper negatives. I took several exposures of each scene, with different filters, these were the most successful I felt.

This is my camera set up:

A wooden 5x4 camera with a Schneider lens

The Editing Process

I spent a day editing through my images to decide which ones to display, and how to display them. I edited through my prints so it was easy to move them around and see how they would play out on a wall.

I took a while to get a grid that I was happy with.
I liaised with Ellen Nolan for a large amount of wall space. I was considering displaying the A0 print I had, though I really wanted to save it for the Free Range exhibition as it takes up considerable wall space.
In reviews people say they see my 10x8s as part of a different series. I see them maybe part of a different chapter, but they are definitely pat of the same book. I went through those prints for a connecting edit too.

I like this edit, with the silver river leading into the heavens, and the path of it repeated in the print at the bottom with the path going through it. People who know the areas have commented on their strange aesthetic, they are backwards! Usually with film emulsion the photograph is viewable on both sides of the film, but with paper, it can only be viewed on one side, so the photographs are backwards. The sky swirls with an ethereal light; the ground is dark, oppressive, angry, aggressive. When I edit, I chose to have things different, I could have put the images with the ground at the bottom, the rivers in the middle, the sky at the top, but the series is representative of a dream, a dystopia, so it needed to be mixed up, adding to the unease of the 'chapter'.

5x4 Paper Photographs

This is my favourite of the photographs i took on 5x4 of the TV as the screen was on for a bit, and the camera was not visible at all through the viewfinder so I was surprised and happy when I saw this come up in the developer.

I spoke to Peter Renn, Paul Corcoran, and Beytan Erkmen and I google searched and found the ISO for the black and white, multigrade resin coated Ilford darkroom paper to be ISO 3. This gave me extremely long exposure times. I used a lightmeter, which let me put the ISO down to 3, set a shutter speed for 60 seconds and it would tell me an aperture. Often if was f1.4 so I would have to do maths and count up the apertures, doubling my exposure times each time. Then remember to add more time for the reciprocity failure of the paper.
Usually the times were varying from 24 minutes to an hour and a half, but several of the photographs were taken over night for 12 hours, like the one of the kitchen.
I would often set the camera up, then leave to then return to it when it was time to close the shutter and put the darkslide back into the negative holder, and pack everything away.

This repeated methodical process is where the project is, it is not defined by prints I may put on the wall. Each one represents an individual moment between me and the camera.

I love the texture on the paper that shows up in these scans. It gives them an organic feel. I started trying to document the time passing, with the repetition of the TV screens, and often I photograph while I am watching TV or using a computer, but this has turned my view of this time related project to one of personal relationship with the camera - discussed in my blog posts with the tag "reflections".