The I-phone Photographer

40 years ago I studied photography in college, to be exact it was in the old girls school, Llwyn-Yr-Bryn. Half our course was looking at the birth and history of photography and the other it was the practical side. It was 5 days a week learning about everything to do with the medium. Normally on a Monday our lecturer Angelo would give us a project for the week.

On the Tuesday saw us leaving the college after registration carrying everything we needed for the day, camera bags, tripods, lenses, filters and the standard light meter. On the odd occasion it could be the Mamiya RB67 medium format camera which meant everything was much bigger ( and heavier ). I didn’t drive but I could walk, everywhere and anywhere at anytime. Before leaving we would have to load the film into our film capsules. We mainly used two speeds of film, HP5 you would use for faster subjects and for more static subjects we would use FP4. We would use PAN F for studio/still life images.

To load the film we would use a black cloth bag with sleeves for your arms. Once zipped up and your arms were in the bag light was blacked out and so able and safe for the film to be loaded into the capsule ready for your camera. Once it was loaded into and sealed into the capsule we could put the film ready to rock ‘n’ roll into the camera.

Having walked for miles and getting to our intended target we would unload, set up take our images no matter the weather we had to do be patient until the “one” was captured. Then wrap up, pack away and walk back to college soaking wet, steaming hot and extremely exhausted no matter the weather.

Back in Llwyn-yr-Bryn and having had a pee, a coffee and a prayer it was to the outer darkroom first. It was time to take the film cylinder out of the camera having first wound the whole film reel back into the capsule. Depending on which camera you used (could afford ), most camera’s rewound automatically, my Praktika MTL5 on the other hand still had a coal Shute to burn the fire that drove the camera’s engine! No, seriously my camera was the cheapest in the group I studied with and fully Manual. The film is now back in the capsule so it was now time to get back into the blackout bag we loaded the film with and now load it onto a reel ready to be placed into the developing cylinder. Once in and sealed we could start the development process. We needed 300ml of 20 degree liquid, 30ml of developing solution and the rest water. It was very important to have the correct temperature in order to obtain the optimal development result.

So for the next 15 minutes we are praying, talking rubbish with the other students and for 10 seconds of every minute’agitating’ the liquid. This keeps the development equal and consistent. This could be done 2 ways, either with an agitation rod which you would place into the middle funnel of the development cylinder and turn it back and forth or just lift the cylinder and turn it upside down several times. Once developed you had a similar process first of all applying ’Stop bath’ which stopped the development working then the process of fixing and then washing the film. Fixing did just as it sounds and fixed the image in place. At this point I would open the lid of the development cylinder with fingers crossed, praying to the photography god, Ansel Adams, that the images would be the works of art you wished for. After finally ‘washing’ the film, literally running water over the film for about 40 minutes, you could hang the film to dry. Using a drying cabinet was preferred so the amount of dust settlement was minimal. That was day 2 complete and it was time for me to walk the 2 miles home which was predominantly Uphill and carrying all of my own equipment.

Day 2 done welcome to the exciting day 3.

The reels of film we had previously loaded were normall reels of 18 images. First job on day 3 was to cut the reel into 3 sections each containing 6 images. Then it was time to make a contact print.

A contact print simply gave you a positive version of the negative images you had placed on the photography paper. When printing black and white images with an ‘enlarger’ you could use various colour filters in the process to give different results, shades and textures visible in your image. I always chose magenta to start with as I feel it gave me the dramatic shades and definition I was after. Black and White film (Monochrome) was Panchromatic which meant it was over sensitive to blue light, for example if you took a landscape which included a beautiful blue sky when printed without any alteration the sky would turn out white. You can ‘burn in’ the sky which would simply mean over exposing that part of the image whilst in the printing process. The process of printing could be a nervous time. I didn’t have the expensive tools my classmates had so I had to make sure everything was covered (literally).

Once the contact print was ready you could perhaps use a magnifying lens to look at each of your tiny images to see just how they looked. I liked to go through my contact print with Angelo my lecturer however, if this was an assignment he just wanted to see the final product. I would choose the image I wanted to print and after placing the relevant negative into the enlarger I would complete a test strip. This was simply a strip of paper which I would expose to my negative under different settings, time and perhaps a change of filter. When checked you could see which of the settings you used had given the best results.

The printing of an image was very much the exact same process as developing the film. There was a developer bath, then a stop bath and finally the fixing bath. Just like the film process I would have to wash and then dry my image.

This was in a darkroom setting and as it sounds there could be no outside light, no room lighting and hopefully no slip ups. Our black and white paper for printing images was fine under the neutral lights within a darkroom but a couple of times someone would forget to switch off their enlarger when changing a filter thus flooding the room with bright white/blue light. Anything not fixed at this stage was ruined by the light flooding the room. So end of day 3 was placing your print/photo into the drier, going for a coffee in the college canteen and the wait of approximately 45 minutes whilst the image dried.

Taking your time, doing everything possible to ensure you produce a beautiful photographic image could be done in a day I agree, but with the equipment used back then and having no transport to get to the point when I could proudly lay in front of my classmates my images would take a couple of days if luck was with me.

The image above of the Weston Super-Mare sea front took no more than 30 seconds. I had to stop my car, get out of the car, get my I-phone out of my pocket, choose the camera app and ‘click’ Done! OK, when I got home I changed the image to black and white in the camera app settings because that is my preference. My favourite photographer of all time is as I suggested above the late, great Ansel Adams. His image, which I urge you to search out, ‘Moonrise over Hernandez’ is thought to be the perfect image. Perfect blacks, greys, whites and everything in between. It is also one of the most expensive images ever sold, $59 million for the original. The equipment Adams used was nowhere near the cameras of today when it came to technological uses. This alone proves it doesn’t matter what or how much the equipment in your hand is.

I labelled this work the I-phone photographer, it doesn’t matter what phone, what camera or what medium you use. Photography is not about capturing a so called celebrity falling drunkly off a horse, its not about recording anything that scares, offends or both. As much as it probably annoys the paparazzi crew out there, in my opinion, photography is an art. The result is the image you capture and how you show it. The result is your vision, a vision which invites it’s viewer to use their own imagination when seeing the image to create a story, a dream.

So, finally…. Don’t worry about having the latest $10,000 camera, don’t worry about what the media tells you what you need, don’t worry about peer pressure and ridicule. Remember Photography is an Art, it’s a science yes, it’s a reporting tool yes, but more importantly again, it’s an Art. Your phone can take an image the same as a camera, but nothing can capture an image that true artist, photographer can see.