Ah, it’s a proper blast from the past, this one… Did you know you can actually load your own photographic film into 36mm canisters? It’s possible, it’s easy, and it actually saves you a mahoosive amount of money, because buying film in bulk is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying film by film. Read the rest of the article »
Oh, the smells of fixative, how I have missed you. I went wholly digital in 2002, and have nary set foot in a darkroom since. But if it hadn’t been for dark-rooms and the manual art of processing film, I think I wouldn’t have been nearly as good a photographer today*.
Developing your own film
Did you know that you can develop your own film on a shoestring budget? You can - you need a room that’s completely dark (bathrooms are good, add a bit of black duct tape, and you have a dark room!), a developing tank, reels, and chemicals. Oh, and you need to know how long stuff needs to be processed, of course. Read the rest of the article »
Completely out of left field, this story, but it turns out that you can use leaves as photographic paper, by using light and iodine to dye the starch in leaves dark.
Random? Well, yes, but it is a fun project, and the results are nothing short of stunning. How does it work?
The chlorophyll in healthy green leaves captures light and uses its energy to join together carbon dioxide and water. The result is the organic compound we call starch. It is the basis of much of the food we eat. Starch is white, but if you drop a small amount of a solution of iodine on it, the starch turns black. So that’s it really.
Why didn’t I think of that? Err, never mind. Go read the article and prepare to be amazed!
I stumbled across an article by Michael Fulks, which serves as a reminder that photography can be dangerous: Read the rest of the article »
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