Feeling Inspired...again !

Starting this blog was mainly a hobby and a way of sharing my love of all things foodie using words and pictures. I have always wanted to have a go at a little bit of creative writing and the design facility on blogger.com makes a great and easy way to express your creative abilities from a design point too.
As I said previously I used to work as a photographer and this was also a way of getting to take a look at  modern photography and start taking some pictures again. Apart from a wedding I did for a butcher mate of mine I have never felted the urge or desire to take any kind of serious photography over the last 7 years I am not too sure why maybe I just felt I had done photography to death and got a little bored with it or maybe as stupid as it sounds I had run out of things to photograph !

Yes Dave McCarthy I did take these pictures !

When I worked as a photographer the instant taking, viewing and distributing or deleting of a picture was not available to most.
I used to have to load the film into my Canon EOS-1n or Mamiya RZ-67 camera, decide on the film I was going to use (Fuji 50 or Kodachrome 64 were favourites and Ilford FP4 was great too.) take a light reading, decide on what focal length of lens to use, adjust the aperture, adjust the shutter speed, focus it myself (although autofocus lens were coming in rapidly) and then I could take the picture provided I had not missed the "MOMENT" as they called it while I was doing this !
If I was shooting black and white I would then have to fondle in a darkroom loading the film from the camera onto a spool and then put it into a light tight developing tank. I would then have to be a chemist getting the right mix of developer and then fixer at the right temperature to develop the film. I would then have to invert the developer tank for 10 seconds every minute for up to 11 minutes until it was ready. It was then the magic of photography really began. You stared at your wet negative film holding it up towards the darkroom lamp while water dripped down your arm as you held your breath to see if first you had developed it properly and then did you have any images on the strip of film and then did you have the one winning image that was going to wow your egotistical, hard work and fussy editor !
I then would do a contact sheet,

A good old fashioned Contact sheet !
Not the best example of my photo talents. The term " Drunk in charge of a camera on a night off in Texas springs to mind ! ha ha !

From the contact sheet I would decide on which images I would want to print. Usually about 5 or 6 to give to my editor to choose from per film.
I would then spend 2-5 hours in a darkroom with a seedy red light (Not much change their then..!! ha ha.) guiding my moves as I used a huge Durst enlarger to print my works of art ! ha ha !
I would have to decide on what grade of printing paper to use 1-5 were the grades. What kind of developer to use for each image and would use my hands as masks underneath the light projecting through the enlarger lens to hold back parts of the projected negative if a certain part of the image needed to be lighter or burn in bits of the picture that needed to be darker. It then went into the tray of developer and I rocked it back and forwards and then as if by magic a image would appear hopefully ! That is a utterly magical moment for a passionate Photographer. To see your image getting clearer with every rocking moment of the developer tray was amazing and no matter how many times you do it you never lose that joyful moment.
It then went into a bath of water then into the rapid fixer that then allowed you to switch the lights on so you could have a proper look at your master pieces !

I still have a lot of that camera kit somewhere in the house and I am going hunting for it tomorrow after work but all the pictures on my blog and the ones below are taking with a £70 14 mega pixel Fuji digital compact which my parents brought me for Christmas last year.

To say I am amazed at the quality of this little baby is an understatement. The macro setting is fantastic and has been responsible for slowly rebuilding my interest in photography this year. I went out today not really thinking about taking too many pictures but did in the end. I got home took the photo card out of the camera slotted it into my mac which automatically uploaded the pictures into I-Photo, and through that program I was able to edit the bad pictures into the bin and then change the pictures I liked which I thought would look better in black and white due to the poor light today into Black and White.
I then used the boost colour button to act like different grades of old style photographic paper, then cropped and manipulate the images in minutes. Apples photo shop is great but it could not give me the smells or the magic of the old black and white darkroom and "I miss the smell of Fixer on my fingers in the morning... it smells like VICTORY...." ha ha. I hope you like these smudges from today.

Another sculpture, this time in Blyth port. I think its an octopus !