A STUDY IN SELF & LIGHT
When I need to develop a roll of film and have a few spare shots left, I sometimes fire off some selfies in my “darkroom” – a fancy name that covers the fact I develop in my bathroom. The lighting can be brutally bright and the background decidedly boring, so these don’t normally get shown publicly. But with these I decided to play with some very rudimentary off-camera lighting to see the effect on the final images.
If you look closely you’ll see these are off a few different rolls of film – the beard length gives that away! But all are taken with my Nikon F2 (without a working meter) and a Nikkor 50mm f1.4 manual lens, generally shooting at 1/125 second wide open at f1.4, hence the inherent softness in the images. Some of the shots make full use of the bathroom lights, and some using a bedside lamp for directional off-camera lighting.
All are self-developed using Ilford Ilfotec DD-X , Ilford Ilfostop and Ilford Rapid Fixer in my trusty bathroom, a process my daughters describe as “Walter White Moments” when they walk in on me. And yes it does look a bit like a home meth lab, but I absolutely love developing my own film now so they’ll just have to get use to it!
Photography really is painting with light, and it is through exercises like these self-portraits that photographers like myself can continue to experiment and explore our art form. Every shot and every roll is a learning exercise and I hope I never bore of the process of discovery in the wonderful world of film photography. Cheers!