day fifteen; july 8th
Had a quick chat with Mum and Dad on Skype before making my way to Uni. Today we developed our film! We first had a look at some amazing portraits by renowned photographers. Took a few pointers. We then moved on to the process of developing the film. This takes quite a while! A series of chemicals, starting with of course the developing solution, then the stop, which as the name suggests, stops the development and then the fix, which basically fixes the pictures. We then cut our film so that it could fit into an A4 film sleeve. Onto the darkroom! So I’m not too boring I’ll cut to the interesting parts: we made contact sheets which is where our film roll is transferred onto paper and from there we can choose which one/s we want to develop. We got to choose one for today and so that particular frame is inserted into a special holder which projects the image onto a surface. The paper is then placed under the “projector” and exposed for the desired time. Put it through the three kinds of solution and voila! An enlargement of your chosen photo! It turned out really well. I chose one that I had taken of a tourist, dressed very well, in front of the Duomo, he really stands out. I wasn’t able to bring the print home because it was still drying but as soon as I can I will take a photo to show you.
So I learnt a lot today and really enjoyed the whole process - look forward to doing more of it. However our next project is portraits and our professor said to take photos of our family and friends…which is a bit of an issue for me as you can understand! So he said to ask people in the streets for their photo - I don’t know about you but I don’t think I have the guts to do that! We have to have the person looking into the camera, they have to know that we are taking their photo. A bit worried as I have 36 photos to take by Tuesday of next week. Shall be interesting.
