My Journey

On my own artistic journey, I have had the opportunity to work with many mediums such as analogue, digital, black and white, and colour. My love for black and white photography grew after my father helped me purchase my first DLSR camera and I enrolled in college for a photography course. I cannot put into words how I felt when I saw my first image exposed on photographic paper. Furthermore, it may sound bizarre, but after spending most of your life in a photographic environment, you really miss the distinct smells of the chemistry.

In recent years, I have acquired a 35mm fully manual camera and enjoy using the medium of black and white film in my free time. Unfortunately, due to limited resources, the only opportunity to use the darkroom at this time is within educational settings. There is hope for the future that I will be able to process and print at home in my own dark room. It will allow me to devote more time and develop more expertise in the dark room away from the university.

During this particular module, there was an opportunity in class to explore different techniques in the dark room. Alternative processes such as Cyanotypes and Salt prints were discussed and demonstrated. It would begin with the analogue process of developing film in a darkroom and that of digital format processing on a computer. Continued by scanning, creating a transparency ready for the dark room procedure, and finishing with the end product of a print. It inspired me to deepen my knowledge and understanding of how to use analogue as a medium and whether it was necessary for this project. My images on my online blog and website are for this.

During class at university, there were presentations from photographers and lecturers, they gave me some invaluable website links and other artists to consider for the subject I was researching. I came across an artist, Ann Brigman’s work and I felt I may be able to recreate this type of abstract work.

At this point, I decided to speak with a helpful technician at the University about using medium and large-format cameras. After spending some time learning how to use a completely manual medium format camera and loading 120 film, I borrowed the equipment to see what I could accomplish independently. After loaning equipment from University, buying cloth materials of black and white silk from the local fabric warehouse, and taking my photographic equipment, as a backup I set a date for the first shoot, which will be discussed later.