Back In July, on the hottest day of this year, we had the most wonderful time photographing Bianca and Rob’s wedding day at Upton Barn and Gardens in Devon. Three months later Woz and I met up with them for a catch up and family shoot at Wellington Monument. The sun shone down for us on a beautiful autumnal day…tree climbing, leaves throwing….there were smiles all round especially from Ella their beautiful Labradoodle! She really knows how to pose!
Family Shoot with Bianca, Rob and Amelia
The Allergies at The Garage in London
Wow! Wow! Wow! Who knew by taking a few random snaps at a gig in Bristol would lead us to travel up to London the same week and take some pics for the amazing group ‘The Allergies’!
If you haven’t heard these guys then you must…as quoted by Craig Charles himself ‘The Allergies are neck deep in the world of scratchy samples -This is truly funk and soul for the 21st century’.
So anyway, how did we get here you may ask, well…The Allergies basically liked my photos from a previous gig (hashtaging really does help!) and next minute we were hopping on the train London bound heading towards The Garage. Both Woz and I absolutely love music in a huge way (it helps the soul, right?), and other than our wedding photography business going fairly quiet over the series of lockdowns, we have really missed live music at gigs and festivals. Unfortunately we contracted Covid over the summer (even though we are both double jabbed) which meant we couldn’t attend the Beautiful Days festival which we had been gearing up for. But hey, some things are slowly getting back to some normality now and so we jumped back deep into going to gigs.
The Allergies are a duo of skilled turntablists from Bristol who formed back in 2012 and along their way they have incorporated the mighty sounds of rapper Andy Cooper, soul sensation Marietta Smith and saxophonist extraordinaire Mr Woodnote. Together they make an incredible team and their performances are nothing but sublime.
Scanning Large Format Negatives
A new scan of one of our earlier shoots
A big part of creating analogue images is producing a final usable result.
When working with large format, this is further complicated because the equipment for mechanically enlarging the negatives is harder to find, more expensive, and harder to accommodate.
We’ve been looking into doing contact prints, which would give us a physical copy made entirely using the old methods, but this would be limited to prints of 4x5 inch size.
So, we also need to scan the negatives so that we can print them digitally. Our first attempts at this process involved using a flat-bed scanner and then reversing them in software to produce a positive image.
We thought the results were passable, but blamed our analogue process for the quality of the results:
Initial attempts at scanning were less than perfect!
Although this method captured the essence of the old process, it really doesn’t reflect the quality that is possible from a large format camera.
So…we kept looking.
Our scanner can scan 35mm negatives as well as medium format, but there’s no option for large format…but photoshop can stitch images together, so we thought we’d try that.
The mask is just a big piece of black card, roughly cut to shape
And it works!
I had to make a mask to put on the glass of the scanner, and we have to move the negative twice for each scan then feed the two images into photoshop.
The results are night and day between the two methods (the new scans are shown after the old ones):
Large Format Photography
Lockdown has given us some time to perfect our large format photography process - we were able to shoot a few during our most recent wedding, and we’ve shot some portraiture at home using each other as subjects.
Woz, shot by Em.
We’re using the Intrepid 4x5 as shown in previous posts and using sheet film, in this case Ilford HP5.
The film has changed what we can photograph. Previously working with paper negatives meant we needed so much light, and such long exposures that the process wasn’t really practical, especially in winter.
The film allows us to even take pictures indoors with windowlight.
Pictured with the film is the processing system we’re using - an SP-445 from stearmanpress.com
This is what’s enabled us to shoot film - as film is far more sensitive to light, it’s much harder to process in a darkened room as even a tiny amount would fog the image.
This is what it looks like with the lid off:
It’s essentially a light proof bottle that allows you to pour and mix the chemicals in daylight, meaning that you don’t need a darkroom to process the negatives.
That said, it’s still a long process, needing a sink and lots of different bottles. Calling it a processing system makes it sound a lot more automatic than it is!
Woz, shot by Em.
This and the above portrait were both shot in window light, with a single reflector being used to create some fill. Without this, one side of my face would be in very dark shadow. The reflector was hung from a light fitting in the kitchen! Not exactly a studio, but it does show that we could do this anywhere where there’s enough light.
Even in my little cottage with small windows, the exposure times aren’t too bad - these were at 1/15s, which means we won’t be shooting any indoor sports or even vague movement!
I’ll write in another post about the trials and tribulations of actually using large format in a wedding situation, which offers many more challenges!
Michael Eavis
Michael Eavis
There aren’t many people out there, I am sure, that haven’t heard of the legendary music get together Glastonbury Festival!
With being a massive music lover and a local lass to the festival, I can’t honestly describe the overwhelming feeling when entering the site….a vast beautiful city of lights, people, tents and music risen from the earth…nah I can’t explain it! Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that the magical place still amazes me now and I’ve been going since 1997 - there is nowhere quite like it.
The festival launched in the grounds of Worthy Farm in Pilton, run by farmers Michael & Jean Eavis in 1970 (my mum went that first one along with 1500 people!). Entrance fees were a mere £1 and you received a free bottle of milk. It’s come a long way since then, and now with over 200,000 people attending the five day festival, with 79 stages to pick from to watch the largest range of music in the world. Whether it’s sunny or more often than not wet, you’ll never cease to be amazed of what Glastonbury Festival offers to you.
In recent times, I arranged to meet the very jovial Michael Eavis when he opened up a village hall in a Somerset village close to Pilton. I have met him a few times in the past but never had the opportunity to take his photo. Most of the time I see him popping into my local Sainsbury’s and didn't feel it was appropriate to ask!
Unfortunately and understandably like many other major events, Glastonbury Festival was cancelled this year due to the pandemic but we are keeping our fingers and toes crossed for next year….
Michael Eavis
The Escott Family
Over the weekend we had brilliant fun with the Escott family who wanted some pictures to send to relatives during the strange times we are having at the moment. We had to arrange this a bit in advance as getting diaries and weather all matching was a bit of a nightmare. Finally, we had a day with some sun and we thought the trees would be lovely at this time of year, so we all met up near a local monument at Burton Pynsent to have a family shoot.
The location is perfect as the monument provides a bit of interest and texture for group photos while the woods below is gorgeous at all times of year, but particularly now with the explosion of autumnal colours in full effect.
It was a lovely time as they were all so happy and full of smiles - although getting them all to look at us at the same time was, as usual, quite challenging!
We are still taking bookings for socially distanced family photo shoots before Christmas so don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Press the button below to take you straight to our contact page!
Intrepid Camera family shoot
We had a family shoot towards the end of October and as we were preparing to finish we asked if they would be happy to pose long enough for us to try out our Intrepid large format camera. They were very keen! When the camera emerged from the car they were all extremely curious and wanted to get under the dark cloth and have a look at the screen to see what we saw.
The image you get on the back, as you’re focussing the camera, is upside down and reversed, which makes framing the image quite interesting!
When you add that you can’t just ‘click a button’ and get a picture, the whole thing becomes much more of an event than using a digital camera.
Here’s the rough process, to give you an idea of the time it all takes:
Arrange everyone in the frame. There’s no zoom and everything is cumbersome and on a tripod, so this involves moving people and camera around a lot…which you’ll see we didn’t quite get right!
Get under the dark cloth and focus the image.
Get a meter reading (we cheated and used one of our Fuji cameras)
Set the Aperture and shutter speed.
Realise people have moved, so refocus the image.
Notice a cloud has covered the sun, so take another meter reading and change the settings!
Manually cock the shutter - this is priming a spring that will open and close the shutter for a set time when you eventually get to press it!
Close the shutter - you have to do this manually and if you forget you will expose the film when you remove the dark slide at step 10 and get no picture.
Insert the film holder (you can’t do this before as it goes in front of the focussing screen and blocks your view).
Remove the dark slide.
Get everyone to smile…while noticing the cloud has moved so the light has changed!
Press the shutter button.
Replace the dark slide.
Remove the film holder.
This process happens for each shot, and takes a while! Weirdly though, it’s such a performance that the family posed really well and it’s about the only time we got them all to hold still and smile at the same time!
Of course, we had no idea if we’d managed to actually capture anything on our 4 shots, so off we went to process the film.
Result!
Of the four shots, we got one dud, which we think was because the shutter was cocked but not closed, and two that are a bit too contrasty because the light changed before we took the picture.
Overall though, we’re happy with the results on this first trial. Next time, we’ll definitely spend more time posing and hopefully less time in the process of taking the image!
Jethro
Jep is a very talented actor based in London and I have been great friends with him for over thirty years. We grew up next door to each other in the same Somerset village where our parents still live and from time to time we manage to meet up. Taking his photograph has always been a complete joy especially as he has, dare I say it, an amazing characteristic and handsome face but also it’s a great opportunity to have a long overdue catch up! Having always had a deep interest in the theatre and live performance (and yes, can you believe it, I have a qualification in performing arts!) I thoroughly enjoy hearing about what Jethro is up to in the world of theatre, tv and film. In 2012, I went to the Globe in London to witness Jethro star alongside Stephen Fry, Mark Rylance & Roger Lloyd Pack in Shakespeare’s Twelfth night, little did I know that one of my favourite photographers, Mary McCartney, was photographing them back stage! These head shots were taken just before we went into lockdown in Jethro’s parents garden, little did we know then what a strange six months would be ahead of us…
Cirque Du Vulgar
By Em
I have had the privilege of working with Cirque du Vulgar alongside Len Copland on a number of occasions and I jumped at the chance when Len got in contact with me last week and said he had another session booked.
Len shoots for the press, but on this occasion I was shooting for the joy of it, the characters in the troupe are just amazing and so much fun to work with. I hope this comes across in the images I’ve included here.
If you’d like a peek at Len’s work, head over to his site here:
https://lencoplandphotography.blogspot.com
