The Large Format Photography Podcast podcast

#54 Catch Up

26/07/2021

The Large Format Photography Podcast

0:00

1:42:14

Just the three of us this week as we recover from the trip to Dave Shrimpton’s house.

This was meant to be more of an email show but there was really only one we could read out and that was just a brilliant one from Pakistan based visual artist Jahanzeb Haroon.

Things we chatted about on the show:

Andrew kicked off the discussion with “what we’ve all been up to”. Shamefully but rationally explained, no LF work from him for ages. The darkroom extension has been an all consuming project and with the first paying workshop customer coming in August the pressure has been on to at least get it functional, and it is now.

Returning from a holiday in Northumberland Andrew has a number of rolls of fil m to develop including 4 or 5 127 films, some HP5 and a roll of expired Astia that he exposed in his Toyo 45a with the 6x17 back. The question goes begging “do we or should we take large format gear on a family holiday”?

Another reason for not exposing too much LF film recently is the need to nail down rotary processing in his Jobo CPE2 or the new variable speed rotating base recently received from Student Photo Store on ebay. Settling down to PyrocatHD and ID111+1 will reduce the creative choices, and darkroom is needed to play around.

Earlier in the year Mat Marrash posted a video all about determining your own personal film speed and “normal” developing time using a Stouffer TP45 step wedge, after years of doing this by trial and error Andrew has taken the plunge and ordered a step wedge.

Mat’s video and a link to the Stouffer site below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN-LM1lM8Kg&t=1005s

https://stouffer.net/Photo.htm#:~:text=Stouffer%20Craftsmanship%20Transmission%20Projection%20%28TP%29%20Step%20Wedges%20are,concept%20used%20when%20approaching%20the%20art%20of%20photography.

Both Erik and Simon have been up to way more exciting things, actually exposing and playing around with LF film and paper.

Erik has been deep diving into lens building with Bronica ETRS lenses and more (see Erik’s IG site below).

Erik posted into the LFPP Facebook group ongoing work with Faux Orotones with some lovely results.

The Orotone process was made famous by Edward Curtis and more info can be found on line (OK Wikipedia to the rescue) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orotone

Erik is looking for a similar effect using gold spray paint and it works really well.

Simon has been busy using his Chroma camera both in and out of the studio with some expired velvia and, in the 6 towns studio, some Harman Direct Positive paper. We have a chat about the challenges of using HDP and its limited tonal range (high contrast). The Ilford PDF data sheet and a recent Ilford video presented by Rachel Brewster-Wright are very helpful if you are thinking of using this great paper for the first time.

https://www.ilfordphoto.com/harman-direct-positive-paper-sheets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFUSiRwfOHs

On the subject of film speed testing friend of the show Billy Sanford recently appeared on the Sunny 16 presents show and talked about his experience with a Richard Pickup approach to film speed testing – he actually cited our LFPP interview with Richard as inspiration.

https://sunny16presents.podbean.com/e/on-location-the-goldilocks-negative-with-billy-sanford/

LFPP listener and FB member Jahenzeb Haroon sent in a lovely email talking all about analogue photography in Pakistan, it’s a great email and do check out Jahenzeb’s work which he produces very much against the odds. We take off our collective hats and not in his direction.

https://www.instagram.com/junk.lab/

And this link all about one of Pakistan’s oldest photography practices that is still going.

https://www.globalvillagespace.com/zaidis-photographers-pakistans-majestic-kaliedoscope/?fbclid=IwAR3nBFNa8cvo6sJvdxDykAR0MziXteY0Ep05OiOItZHQ5adntspdyGXhkWM

LFPP links -

https://largeformatphotographypodcast.podbean.com/

ko-fi.com/largeformatphotographypodcast

You can join in the fun at our Facebook Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2296599290564807/

And now our Flikr group curated by Colin Devroe

https://www.flickr.com/groups/lfpp/

Get Twitter updates for the show from Andrew –

https://twitter.com/warboyssnapper