Hi everyone! I hope y’all had a great week and if you didn’t, I hope things get better for you. This week I wanted to talk about my film I had developed and scanned for my travel writing class since it will stick with my current theme of finding elements of art in nature. I worked with the wonderful people at Black Lab Imaging in Flemington, NJ, and they did a beautiful job of developing and getting all my film scanned so I would recommend checking them out if you need that type of work done and don’t have access to a studio!

I was super excited to get a look at my film since this was my first time working with color film. For the color, I shot five rolls of Kodak 400 and for black and white, I went with my usual choice of Ilford hp5 and fp4 (shooting four and three amount of rolls respectively) using my Canon EOS Rebel 2000.

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I really loved how super saturated the colors turned out with a lot of these shots. I did have to go into Photoshop and touch up and rework the colors so they looked more true to life which is expected with color film. I was really nervous, especially for the color film, because I purchased my Canon the week of the trip since my KS Super II tends to freeze in cold weather. I had been wanting a new SLR to mess with for a while and decided to chance it and buy something off E Bay and it worked out very well in my favor!

Above are shots from time spent at Newgrange, the Cliffs of Moher, and the Burren respectively. While at Newgrange, I felt drawn to this one ash tree and it just happened that an opening in the sky hovered above the tree so I absolutely had to capture that moment. Finally getting to edit the shot, I realized how it reads almost like an oil painting to me with the gorgeous glow coming from the opening in the clouds and the subtlety of earthy tones found in the tree and the grass. The Cliff faces and the Burren offered an opportunity to really play with the greens and yellows of the grass as well as the greens of the Atlantic Ocean. My class also got blessed with some really nice blues in the sky the first few days of the trip considering how much it rains in Ireland.

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Ever since I began working with b&w 35mm film back in 2017, I’ve been obsessed with how far you could push values to feel dark and moody. Although it’s very important to have pure, bright whites (which I feel best come across in the far right image where the sunlight is directly hitting the Ocean) I really adore a rich dark grey or black and it was important to me to retain that moody feeling, especially with the Ocean. I want the viewer to feel drawn in, almost as if being lured in by a siren to their death. The mysterious quality of water has always drawn me in and looking at these shots of the Ocean almost makes me feel like I’ll be pulled into the water.

I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and I did want to say one thing: you do NOT have to be constantly productive right now and you are NOT a failure if all you can bring yourself to do is watch movies for the day. Of course, it’s always great to get school work done or exercise, but taking care of your mental health is necessary so do what YOU feel is best for yourself. As always, reach out if you have any questions for me and I hope everyone has a great week!