dylan barnes | blog

Tag: film

  • My First Roll: Mark O’Brien

    My First Roll: Mark O’Brien

    My First Roll is a series for film photographers to share the images from their first roll of film.  Everyone starts shooting at a different time and for different reasons.  Some shooters may have started shooting yesterday while others have started shooting decades ago.  This series provides a glimpse into the humble beginnings of individual photographers, encouraging us to reflect on our earlier work to find beauty and appreciation in our inexperience and to understand how we got to where we our now and where we want to go in our photographic journey.

    Mark O’Brien, of Ann Arbor, MI., shares his first roll of film from forty seven years ago when he was just thirteen years old.  The images were taken on a Kodak Instamatic with 126 format black and white film.

    Mark O’Brien, August 1970.

    Kodak Instamatic, 64 ASA Black and White Film.

     

  • Reader Excerpts: Found and Lost

    Reader Excerpts: Found and Lost

    Today’s feature comes from Craig Peters.  Craig shows us a large format photography project that visually represents his feelings towards certain aspects of his life.  

    Reader Excerpts allow those who read Now Developing to become part of the collective by sharing a written piece alongside their images on a topic of their choice.  If you have any ideas for a piece and would like to have it featured here, feel free to contact me!

    Found and Lost, shot and written by Craig Peters (Website, Instagram)

    The images Uncomfortable, Sadness, and Revelation are all about my reaction to having anxious feelings towards questioning my religious beliefs. The latter piece being the acceptance that it is alright to not be religious, as I experienced some anxiousness in questioning my beliefs. The symbols on the torso in that image are the Pax Cultura Freedom symbol, an important symbol in my own life regarding the freedom of the arts. The other three images are a physical manifestation of those feelings. They are the personification of my emotions depicted in the first three images.

    So in the studio for the still lives, I would get the lights how I wanted and turn off all of the lights. In darkness, I would open up the 4×5 lens and pop the flash manually depending on how closed down I wanted the aperture to be.

    For the three portraits, I used a rail 4×5 and lit it with modeling lights and synced the flash to the shutter on the 4×5 lens.

    For Anxiety I wanted a self portrait with myself obscured. I took a piece of sheer black cloth and shook it in front of me with continuous LED lights for about ten seconds.

  • Reader Excerpts: Views from the Porcelain Throne

    Reader Excerpts: Views from the Porcelain Throne

    Today’s feature comes from Jack Allan. Jack showcases a point of view piece from no other place than the toilet.  The uniqueness is not only in the subject matter and where the series is shot, but the beauty lies in the limitations of the series, both in process and final production.

    Reader Excerpts allow those who read Now Developing to become part of the collective by sharing a written piece alongside their images on a topic of their choice.  If you have any ideas for a piece and would like to have it featured here, feel free to contact me!

    Views from the Porcelain Throne, shot and written by Jack Allan (Website)

    The View From the Porcelain throne was a project that I think I had been musing about for quite a while before making the work. I’ve always loved the imprint that people leave, and interior design taste levels are something from this I feel there’s a large amount of people who make thoughtless choices.

    On the flip side, there’s some very well considered spaces, but maybe they’re executed in a way that seems a little bit off. Take framed artwork for example. How is it framed? What have they chosen to be framed? How is it placed on the wall/shelf/other surface? This is what I looked for in toilet cubicles. Little details that make the space unique.

    These cubicles are familiar to a very large portion of the world, and they’re a space that everybody is equipped to occupy and ultimately you’re forced to see from a set viewpoint. What I was looking for was a collection of these views, but with quite heavy limitations on what equipment I was to use.

    I had just finished my university course in photography, and having spent the last 2.5 years photographing in quite a formal way (re shooting, showing progress in work, building a large body of work etc) and with a Rolleiflex, it just felt natural to grab a disposable camera for this project. What better than a camera with a basic set of features for a project about toilets.

    Equipped with a viewfinder, film advance, flash, lens, film counter and what loaded with FujiFilm Superia 400, this little guy had 27 shots ready to go. The entire project was shot on this one camera as it gave me a crappy limitation on shots I could take, and the inability to edit the photos afterwards. Except this crappy camera only gave me 26 frames in total, limiting me a tiny bit more!

    Working with a 35mm lens in these small spaces was entertaining, and even more so when the flash would go off, and another patron of the bathroom would make audible surprise noises. I quite enjoyed this little quirk amongst all of the strange spaces I found myself in.

    There’s a green monstrosity of tile that was in a hotel of cool blues and grey tones everywhere but this toilet, a frowning frog in a frame watching you and a stall with what felt like a white stable door keeping you safe. These spaces became more and more entertaining as I pressed on!

    The final result consists of 26 6×4 prints from Boots (a drugstore photo lab) which are limited to this run as another level of limitation for this project. This very sudden impulsive project is probably one of the favourite pieces of work I’ve made, and I think I’ll always have a soft spot for it!

     

  • Developed Roll: Leica M2 w/ 35mm Zeiss ZM // Ilford XP2 Super 400

    Developed Roll: Leica M2 w/ 35mm Zeiss ZM // Ilford XP2 Super 400

    All shots were taken with a Leica M2 with 35mm f2.8 Zeiss ZM.

  • Student Showcase: Club Photos 2017

    Student Showcase: Club Photos 2017

    It’s that time of year again.  As we approach the Holiday season, me and my middle school film photography students begin to prepare for the annual gallery event.  This year has been especially rad because we were able to put together a darkroom and begin enlarging our negatives in addition to scanning them.

    In the past, newer, younger students were handed point and shoot cameras to focus on shot composition and film familiarity.  However. these young preteens and teenagers have seriously risen to the occasion this year since I took all training wheels off by handing them an SLR on day one.  The results were nothing short of amazing.  I find it particularly interesting to flip through my students’ images simply because of the subjects they choose to shoot.  Theoretically, it’s probably just like any of us; simply shooting the things that we care most about and find interesting.  However what a 11-14 year old finds interesting is much different. Their worlds are typically much smaller than ours and they find a lot of beauty through the that narrow scope, although each of our individual journeys are much different.

    I plan on doing a post later on in the coming weeks on the final results of their work along with the gallery event, but since the students have a solid catalog of images already scanned in, I figured it would be a great time to display some of my personal favorites from the student archive of 2017.  I hope you enjoy the images as much as I enjoyed teaching the film experience to another group of youngsters.

    Zoe B.
    Joey M.
    Anthony B.
    Kyleigh O.
    Elizabeth B.
    Cole G.
    Morgan C.
    Abbigail J.
    Emma D.
    Emerlina L.
    Anthony L.
    Brianna L.
    Olivia T.
    Haley M.
    Talia W.
    Jailyn N.
    Mackenzie M.
    Janelle R.