Friday 25 March 2016

Geneva, Lausanne and Lucerne in Black and White

I have added new black and white photographs of 3 Swiss cities, Geneva, Lausanne and Lucerne. They weren't taken this year but I have just scanned the negatives to add to the existing sets. The Lucerne set also includes a picture taken on Pilatus, one of the mountains that overlooks the city and can be accessed by cable car from close to Lucerne.

Here are the permanent links to all images for:
Geneva: www.davebutcher.co.uk/gallery/cities?place=Geneva
Lausanne: www.davebutcher.co.uk/gallery/cities?key=Lausanne
Lucerne: www.davebutcher.co.uk/gallery/cities?place=Lucerne

Geneva



Lausanne




 Lucerne




Thursday 24 March 2016

More New Images of Exmoor in Black and White

I recently loaded some more black and white photographs of Exmoor to my gallery website, www.davebutcher.co.uk. All taken in January 2016 on Ilford 120 film, FP4 and 400 Delta, using Mamiya 7 cameras. 
Exmoor Trees

Great Hangman Hill near Combe Martin

 Lorna Doone Farm and Bridge

 St Mary's Church, Oare

Robbers Bridge, Lorna Doone Country

Countisbury near Lynmouth

 Valley of Rocks, Lynmouth

Saturday 12 March 2016

Experience Black and White Film and Darkroom Course

The photo is of one of the Peak District locations, a few miles from home, that I used for the recent 2 day Experience Black and White course. It was a private course for Trevor from Sheffield who wanted to experience using a film camera for the first time to take landscapes on black and white film. I lent him a Nikon FM2 with a zoom lens and gave him 2 rolls of Ilford FP4 film. Most of the first day was spent getting used to the switch from digital to film and taking photographs. 
We were back to base by 3pm. Then after a tea-break it was into the darkroom to process the film and hang it up to dry in the drying cabinet.
Day 2 started in the darkroom with making up 3 dishes of chemicals for making prints (developer-stop bath-fixer). Then the film from the day before was cut up and we made a contact print (the equivalent of thumbnails in digital-speak! This is a print of all of the negatives on a film at the actual size of the negative, no enlargement). From this we could choose which negatives to print. Since Trevor hadn't been in a darkroom before I was explaining everything as we went along. Next came a demonstration by me of the printing technique that everyone should be using in the darkroom, called Split-Grade Printing, the technique specifically designed by Ilford to work with the Ilford Multigrade RC paper that we used. It's the easiest way to make good quality prints without the need for lots of work in the darkroom. Then the rest of the day was spent with Trevor making 14 x 11 inch prints from his film. We managed to make 5 prints before time ran out. The final washing of the prints takes just 5 minutes or so and I have an Ilford 1250 dryer which dries them in about 20 seconds. We were soon finished and admiring results from the 2 days. He had some excellent prints to mount and frame for the walls of his home as well as now having first hand experience of the entire film camera and darkroom process.
If this sounds of interest contact me and we can talk through the options. The course is usually 2 days but can be done in 1 day with 1 location, 1 film and making just 1 or 2 prints.
See www.darkroomdave.com for videos and illustrated articles of some of the techniques that will be covered, all free, no subscription.

Thursday 10 March 2016

Watersmeet on Exmoor in Black and White

I have scanned a few of my Ilford FP4 120 film negatives from our recent trip to Exmoor. We stayed in Lynmouth and were able to walk to and from Watersmeet. If you did it there and back it's probably less than 4 miles although it was closer to 8 miles taking our rather indirect route.

It was a dull day but good for waterfalls. It's much easier to print waterfalls that are not sunlit than those that are! Watersmeet house was also still closed up for the winter so no advertising signs and few people in my pictures. The last time I took photos here it was really busy and not as much water, the recent rain really helped the waterfalls.

The temporary link to these new images on my gallery website is:
www.davebutcher.co.uk/gallery/recent?key=Watersmeet

To see all of the Watersmeet photos that I have on my website follow this link:
www.davebutcher.co.uk/gallery/landscapes?key=Watersmeet




Thursday 3 March 2016

Lynmouth Harbour in Black and White

I have started scanning and editing the films that I took on our trip to Exmoor in January. So far I have just done the Lynmouth Harbour images. The next set will be the ones of Watersmeet just a couple of miles outside Lynmouth.