Wedding Aftermath

I was really hoping to be the bride who had time to take photos of the event room we decorated as we went along - but decorating a room for the wedding is hard work and stressful - and when I wasn't busy hanging ribbons, fairy lights and putting pom poms everywhere - I was drinking tea (thanks Mums) to keep me going and sane. I did however manage to get some photos of the event room after the wedding just before we cleaned everything out properly and I'm actually really happy about that.

(I made 127 doilies in total and these lovely letters from card and wool. Wool everywhere!)

Gosh I loved that room! I was just so pleased that all our ideas worked and everything came together so perfectly. It took us a whole day to string the ribbons and fairy lights and then another day to move everything else in and sort it all out but once it was up I couldn't stop staring or smiling at how perfect it was - better than I even imagined (and I studied Interior Design peeps and drew it all up in 3D before hand). 

So having that time alone in the space, to remember, to cherish it and to fix it in my memory with photos was really important to me. I couldn't believe then that it had happened, that it went so well and just like that it was over - and I still can't really believe it now.

These photos are also making me super excited about getting our professional photographers photos back as well, woohoo!

p.s. These are some of the first colour negatives I've scanned - it was tougher than I imagined compared to the black and white but I think I'm happy with most of the results -   enough to share them here at least! (Some are a bit yellow? I don't know why they but were worse before I edited them but thats probably another post in itself!)

Camera: Canon EOS 750
Film: Agfa Vista 200
Location: Piggyback Barns, Sculthorpe (such a wonderful venue for a wedding and accomodation!)
 

On scanning photos...

I'm currently scanning my 3rd film out of 12 that I've taken over the past 2 weeks (yeay!) and I wanted to quickly write about how I'm finding scanning the films myself rather than getting them scanned elsewhere.

(Camera: Canon EOS 750  Film: Kodak BW400CN  Location: Hardcastle Craggs, Hebden Bridge)

It's been a joy and I am loving it.

I just shared a post last Friday about using the scanner but I actually wrote that about 3 weeks ago and since then I've had time to think about my photo process (in between all the other exciting things going on ha) and all of a sudden I feel in a much more relaxed place compared to the last few months of taking photos before having my scanner.

I thought that I would be impatient to see my photos and annoyed that I'd have to wait for each roll to scan - that I would hate the prolonged process and just want to have the results already. But then I started scanning and the excitement wasn't in getting a whole CD of photos that I quickly rushed through. The excitement was having the time with each individual photo and getting to look at them all as single items rather than part of a collection of photos and that has been SO exciting! Some photos aren't quite in focus (grr Rhianne) and some aren't the best photos I've taken but having that small amount of time to look at the photo, remember where I was and how I felt when I took it has almost been meditative for me.

I'm still quite surprised that I feel this way as I am usually so impatient about things - but adding another step to the photo process has only made the journey feel more like its mine rather than detract from it in any way and I'm so relieved about that. I can't wait to see what the next 9 rolls of film bring me and I definitely can't wait to share more photos!

p.s. A sneak peak of the photos coming up with the image above - scanned by myself, woop!

More black and white photos I scanned myself!

Oh yeah baby! I love that these photos are all close to where I work in Leeds too - I've been working in the city for nearly a year now (what?!) but this was my first time actively going out in my lunch break taking photos. I need to rectify that situation!

(I think its meant to say "All that I know is that I know nothing" - the fact they couldn't finish it made me chuckle)

I think for my first scanned negatives I'm pretty pleased with the final results - its quite hard to know when to edit, how to edit and when to stop editing - I could very easily get carried away with Photoshop haha  - so I tried to keep the tweaks quite simple with these. I think they look pretty good!

I've been chatting with my friends about film  vs digital  and feeling overwhelmed with having another part of my photography process that could change everything - but ultimately, this is just another way for me to learn what I like with my photos and to learn to trust my instincts and gut with how I think my photos should look. In fact my first ever 'Searching for Something' post was about editing and finding that image I was looking for in my results.

I wrote this is 2011 - but it seems just as relevant to me right now.

"To me, each photo I take is like falling in love - you're constantly search for it - everywhere you go - even if you aren't aware that you are... sometimes you can't see it, sometimes you find it in one step, sometimes you have to work a bit harder, perhaps challenge your preconceptions and break some of your own rules... but just like love - no one can tell you when you've found that perfect photo, you just know it... through and through!"

Camera: Canon EOS 750
Film: West Yorkshire Cameras B&W Film
Location: Leeds
Scanner:  Epson V370 scanner

I bought a film scanner (finally)

So as well as turning 30 and getting married, September was also the month that I finally bought my own film scanner - a busy month huh. I've mentioned before that I usually use a shop in Leeds called Max Speilmann to develop and scan my photos and usually the quality of the scans (combined with how cheap they are) is enough for what I need to share photos on here and occasionally print them.

Until one film.

I've been trying to find more black and white films since the demise of Kodaks BW400CN film (still so sad, I should have stocked up) and as part of my searching I found that a local camera shop in Leeds - West Yorkshire Cameras - sold their own C41 B&W film - how awesome and perfect is that? So obviously I bought one to try and I ran it through a camera as fast as I could. And it was all going great until I picked up the film from Max Spielman and saw the results - they were so grainy - as you can see in the photo below (ignore the light streak, we're pretty convinced that was user error ha).

At first I thought it was me, so I popped to the West Yorkshire Camera shop to ask them if they'd seen results like it before and the man working there was great - he looked at the negatives for me and figured out that basically Max Speilmann's scanners couldn't cope with the negative.... so I bought a new scanner that could scan films that evening - like you do. A Epson Perfection V370. I could have bought a more expensive one, but I wasn't sure if that was what I wanted to do and actually this one has been great and done exactly what I needed it to do. Phew! 

The photo above is the scan from my scanner - as you can see the grain is much much better and the photo seems much softer with a more balanced contrast (though could it be lighter? perhaps?). I'm still not particularly great at scanning - now that I've started it I'm thinking that perhaps I've opened a whole can of worms with scanning details haha. Especially if I decide to scan ALL my photos - I've taken 50 films in my LC-A alone, so I can't imagine how many films I do actually have to rescan now in total. At this moment I've scanned 5. Though those 5 are swaying me to scan them all as even with my limited scanning experience so far they look so much better quality and grain that the ones I originally have.

If any one has any tips about film scanning (that won't fry my brain) I'd love to hear them!