This film swap business has started to develop a life of its own. Fresh rolls are now arriving every week and I am really enjoying the creative collaborations.

This latest round was shot by Joost in downtown Cairo and I re-shot it in Howth Co. Dublin.

My Camera was a Nikon F100
Joost used an Olympus 2MD
Film: …”a strange Japanese ‘lucky film’ brand 100 iso”
Dev: Lab C-41

You can catch more of Joosts work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/79818573@N04/

If you would like to try one of these international film swaps please get in touch. it can be as simple as shooting a roll of film and sticking it in the post.

http://www.facebook.com/AwareOfTheVoid

For reasons that I don’t think will ever be fully understood my pal Nikhilesh, in his late twenties, has decided to take up roller-blading. He bought the full kit, wrist, shoulder and knee pads, helmet and a fine looking pair of roller blades. He has confessed that he always wanted to learn to skate but felt that if he tried it on the streets of Kakinada he would become a source of amusement for the locals. I had explained that he could look forward to the same reaction from the people of Dublin.

Having watched a couple of you tube videos on how to skate he decided to throw himself in at the deep-end. A group of us decided to do a photo-walk at a local prawn festival last weekend and Nikhi wore his “blades”. As part of the photo-walk I wanted to show off the beautiful hillside so we started to climb. I suggested that my pal should put on a pair of shoes for the climb and I was informed that he was going for total immersion  I believe that his idea was that if the Blading got tough  if he had shoes with him he could quit too easily – so he left his shoes at home.

Just as we reached the summit the wind caught Nikhi and since his wheeled feet had no traction he just rolled slowly off the cliff edge. We all looked on in horror as he clambered at the rocks, I leaned out with my hand to help, this was refused. He said if I keep offering to help he would never learn to skate.

These are more shots for the very enjoyable and ongoing  film swap project. This was a roll of Agfa Precisa slide film shot by Inge in Maastricht, Netherlands and then re-shot by me in Howth, Dublin. It was Cross Processed in C-41 chemicals and this is a pure unedited scan of the results.

My Camera was a Nikon F100
Inge used a Ricoh KR-10x
Film: Agfa Precisa CT
Dev: Lab C-41

You will see more of Inge’s wonderful work at www.flickr.com/photos/frau_inga/

If you would like to try one of these international film swaps please get in touch. it can be as simple as shooting a roll of film and sticking it in the post.
Full set in the link below
www.facebook.com/AwareOfTheVoid

I am now pretty sure that there is some form of higher power at play when it comes to these film swaps. There is normally at least one shot that woks out so well you can only assume an unseen mystical film guru is somehow involved in the process.

This was the third of my international film swaps and my second attempt with blogging buddy and fellow film enthusiast Monica. Our first attempt failed miserably when my camera jammed half way through a roll. Despite my best effort at a makeshift dark-bag the roll was lost to the sunlight. In the finest traditions of trying to fail better we had another go.
Moni shot her side of the project in Oregon – USA. I then red scaled two of the rolls and reshot them in Dublin.

My Camera was a Nikon F100
Moni used a Pentax P30T
Film: Fuji Superia Xtra 400

You will see more of Moni’s wonderful work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pappergank/

or her excellent blog at  http://blatherskiteblog.com/

If you would like to try one of these international film swaps please get in touch. It can be as simple as shooting a roll of film and sticking it in the post.

http://www.facebook.com/AwareOfTheVoid

I had the good fortune to catch up with some old friends from university recently. We passed the time in the usual manner, trying not to focus too much on how much older we all look, avoiding making direct eye contact with new found bald spots and patches of graying hair. It is not often that someone asks me direct questions about my past but I was very surprised when someone enquired if I was still in touch with Rennie or any of the other Goose fats.

If you ever need to make a really lasting impression on someone, ride towards them on a unicycle while juggling knives. This is how I met the legend that would become known as Rennie Peppermint.  The chap knew how to make an entrance. He worked out the exact colour tone of the granite used to construct most of the grey buildings in Aberdeen and made sure that his outfits always clashed with them. Walking down Union street you could, literally, spot him a mile away.

He barreled toward me on his one-wheeled death machine and shouted in a thick Glaswegian accent, inquiring if I was the lad with the Irish accent and bass guitar. I explained that I had an accent and a bass but I was not proficient with either. “Does nay matter” was the abrupt reply. And with that I found myself in a band.

The third member, our guitarist slash drummer , was a Scouser called Flash Ron. I don’t believe that there was anything prodigious about myself and Ron. We were chosen primarily for our ownership of musical instruments and exotic accents. Later I would discover that it was forever an annoyance to Rennie Peppermint that local and national newspapers never picked up on the column inches that could have arisen from some very hackneyed Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman walk into a bar type set-ups.

The music we played was Nirvana mashed up with the Petshop Boys with a side of Bowie and was pretty out there even for some of the electronica that was doing the rounds at the time. But the music was not what “Rennie Peppermint and the Goose Fats” was about. It was more of a stage act. It tended to be Rennie doing his own crazy brand of  circus tricks on stage with the climax being the After-Burner. This involved Rennie drinking mouthfuls of kerosene, spitting it into the air above the audience and setting fire to it before it hit the crowd. The resulting fire ball was spectacular. As was the resulting indigestion for poor Rennie. His excessive consumption of a well know brand of indigestion tablets is in fact where he got his stage name.

At its peak the band had a single in the UK charts “If you don’t like it, get the F*ck off my boat”.  Not at a high number but it was in there. We were signed to EMI records but never produced an album due to artistic differences.  The differences being that we were unable to play together, did not have anything to contribute or even the drive to be famous that spurs on similarly untalented clowns. We claimed at the time that we left the label over the disgust at the money-worshipping commerciality of the music industry.

Sadly, Flash Ron was killed in a car accident a few years ago. The obituary in his local newspaper mentioned his brief brush with fame but unfortunately misrepresented us as “Pepto Abysmal and the Goose Steps”. I am still trying to have this rectified and my complaints to the PCC have so far fallen on deaf ears.
Rennie Peppermint finished his degree and was one of the architects responsible for selecting the door furniture for the CERN project. As a fat middle aged architect he no longer craves fame and or infamy. Which makes it all the more ironic that it was one of his door handles that fell into the large hadron collider causing 2.8 million euros of damage and throwing modern science back a decade. Although knowing him, insofar as anyone could know him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had been recruited by a future version of himself sent back in time to sabotage the project for the sake of all humanity.

As for me, I got my shit together and started a blog……..

Following on from the much discussed failure that was my original film swap with Flickr buddy Inge and taking the advice of the late, great Samuel Beckett “Try again, fail again, fail better” we decided to give it another go. To try and make sure we had some success this time around we sent film in two directions. I shipped a roll of Fuji Superia 200 towards Inge and a roll of DM Paradies 400 landed on my door step. The plan was simple, redscale and double expose one roll and do a straight double exposure on the other roll.

I shot my half of the project in and around Dublin, Ireland. Inge shot hers it in Utrecht in the Netherlands.

My Camera was an Olympus Trip 35 for the straight double exposure and Inge used a Praktica B200. For the redscale roll I used my Nikon F100 and Inge used her great LC-A+

You will see more of Inge’s wonderful work on Flickr

If you would like to try one of these international film swaps please get in touch. it can be as simple as shooting a roll of film and sticking it in the post.

Someone pointed out to me that I have a lot of film based blog posts and they found it surprising because they had seen my digital photography and were disappointed that I have not posted more digital work on the blog. I generally don’t make a distinction between my film and digital photography and I had not realized that I was writing a film photography blog or more interestingly that anyone would care. Tonight I redress that.

I dipped into the archives and looked to see when I last used my digital camera as my primary means of recording my activities and I found to my amazement that when I was in Florence I took over 1000 photos – every one a keeper…..

Here are some of my favorites and if you make it to the bottom I have used the occasion of  my blogiversary to upload my first video.

Before we made the trip to Florence I had read a fair bit about the history and architecture of the city but I was not prepared for the size, beauty and magnetism of the of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore -The DUOMO.

It seems to be around every corner, at the end of every street, in every view.

Anywhere I pointed my camera it was there looming and taunting me. I took so many photos of it, at dawn, at dusk, with people, without people in the baking heat, in the pouring rain that I feel that if I did not do something to exorcise this monument it would haunt me for the rest of my life, hence my video “Hyper Duomo”

Just to be clear I have not in fact seen IR light for that is impossible. Instead I have made a concerted effort to try and capture it on film. To this end I have spent money on a special filter and purchased a few rolls of a special type of film that is sensitive to light at the infrared end of the spectrum.

I am genuinely perplexed by the results. Perhaps the photos have an ethereal quality that is lacking in some of my other shots. It is hard to tell because I find it really difficult to take landscapes. I understand the principle and the technical aspect but I sometimes struggle with the composition and when I reflect on them I find the scene uninteresting. I often take a few shots and than have an urge to run into the scene to lend it some human interest. Maybe I need to concentrate on my portraits more.

I will continue to shoot the IR film because I find the results interesting and until I figure out why I like them at least it is making me think about my photography.

Irish Wood Imp  //  Nikon F100  //  Ilford SFX 200 (IR)  //  Hoya G (Orange) + Circular Polarizer

The River Tolka //  Nikon F100  //  Rollei Infrared 400S  //  Heliopan Infrared 715 (88A)

Roman in the Park  //  Nikon F100  //   Efke IR820  //  Heliopan Infrared 715 (88A)

 Herculanean Temple  //  Nikon F100  //   Efke IR820  //  Heliopan Infrared 715 (88A)

Alveoli  //  Nikon F100  //  Ilford SFX 200 (IR)  //  Hoya G (Orange) + Circular Polarizer

Roman in the Park  //  Nikon F100  //   Efke IR820  //  Heliopan Infrared 715 (88A)

Other Peoples Art //  Nikon F100  //  Rollei Infrared 400S  //  Heliopan Infrared 715 (88A)

Myself and Flickr buddy Inga decided that it would be a whizz to double expose and redscale a roll of film. In the finest traditions of international relations Inga shot her side of the roll in the Netherlands and shot mine in Ireland. When it arrived in Dublin I reversed the film and reloaded it into the canister. I shot the redscaled side of the film at 80iso. The plan was to get some interesting double exposures with the added drama of a hint of red dreaminess.

Unfortunately Inga had a problem with her camera and only one shot got exposed in the Netherlands. This is that one shot. The rest of the roll is “normal” redscale.

I really think there is potential here and steps are being taken to repeat the experiment and hopefully we will have more shots to share.

My Camera was a Nikon F100
Inga used a LC-A+
Film: DM Paradies 400 ISO – Rescaled and shot at 80 ISO
Dev: C-41

I lived in Scotland for a number of years and was lucky to see many wonders of the land. People will be familiar with the Haggis or “The Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin Race”. A small creature that roams the hillsides of Scotland and has adapted to its environment by having only three legs all of different lengths. This has meant that all the Haggis that you see in supermarkets have been captured on lowland plains where its leg arrangement is a handicap and the poor animal when trying to escape runs in small circles making them easy pickings. I was at one time  involved in the yearly cull of the Haggis population, I was young and foolish. It is one of the reasons that I am now a committed “Friend of the Haggis” I have photos of Haggis in the wild but I dare not publish them in case it aids in their persecution.

I lived on the shores of Lake Ness and have seen a Plesiosauria in the wild. I tried to get a photo but the camera jammed and the shot came out blurry and unusable. It is unfortunate but I am sure there are plenty of perfect photos of the Lake Ness monster so my poor efforts would do nothing to add to the overwhelming weight of evidence of the existence of the Monster.

But what I found on my haphazardly developed roll of film from my recent trip is likely to turn the world on its head, I am typing this worried that Scottish comedians will try and hunt me down for what I have managed to capture on film. If news of my discovery gets out it will ruin the punchline to nearly every joke at the Edinburgh fringe festival. I managed to take a photo of a shadow in Scotland. I know you may not believe me but I swear it is real. I was looking at a wall and all of a sudden it got a little warmer and the shadow of the lamp appeared. I had my back to the sun when it peaked out from behind the clouds but I am sure it was real, there can be no other explanation.

Sunlight is real and for too long the people of Scotland have been led to believe that it was made up. It is as real as Haggis and the Lake Ness monster. The Scotch have a right to know the truth and I will not be silenced.

Evidence of Sunlight

The house move is now more or less complete and we are settling into the business of getting used to a new place. I was putting my darkroom back together and I found a bunch of negatives from my time at university. There is more than a hint of nostalgia about the shots and most will never appear in public to protect the innocent and not so innocent but this one really highlights just how badly I have archived some of my photos in the past.

That is the Aberdeen skyline circa 1997. Shot from my flat on the Great Northern Road.

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