breaking the lines

Lately I’ve been in the mood for some more focused learning and I’ve been following some online courses, some photography related, some not, and it has been an enjoyable experience. Every few years I make an effort and use some of the amazing resources that are available nowadays and it’s always been worthwhile. In case you’re looking for photography related courses: There is an excellent coursera course on Photography by MoMA that was really very very helpful and interesting. I did it some time ago and I felt that it was one of the best online courses I had ever taken, so I’d definitely recommend it. The one I’m following right now is called The Camera Never Lies and is actually a history meets photojournalism course which is also very detailed and interesting. I’m really amazed at all the stuff that you can learn online. You might know that I’ve been teaching myself all sorts of film photography related things over the years and I pretty much learned it all from free sources on the internet. Stand-development, developing and printing in Caffenol, C41 and E6 development, splitgrade printing, how to dry fibre prints with and without a print dryer, scanning, lately how to use large format cameras and so on. It’s pretty much all described in articles, videos and helpful comments in film photography related forums and groups. You just have to know how to use a search machine and you can find all sorts of great information. Once I even came up with a detailed syllabus that follows the progression of an art history degree with courses that are all available online for free. As long as you’re not dependent on the qualification, you can do the same thing for any degree and acquire all sorts of knowledge in self-study. The only requirement is that you have access to a good library or the money to buy the books.

And since we’re talking about books: Today I would like to recommend an excellent book to you called The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes. It’s a 700 page tome all dedicated to alternative printing and photography which compiles so much knowledge that it would probably take me years if I were to try to attempt every technique in the book. And the best thing: It’s actually an excellent book about the history of photography too and although I know quite a bit about the subject already there are always interesting details that I didn’t know about yet. Really, I can’t recommend this book enough, it’s just wonderful and full of inspiration for experiments! My latest experiments? I’ve been playing with my Diana F+ camera and the cable release bracket to take pinholes, since this is the first chapter in the alternative processes book. Not the sharpest pinhole design out there, but it definitely has a nice feel to it and doesn’t require any tinkering to get started.

The other thing that kept me busy this week was my pile of undeveloped rolls of film. Should I really admit that I still have 105 undeveloped rolls of film lying around? I’m not really pushing myself to develop them as quickly as possible, so it will probably still take a while until I’m finished with it. I might as well announce already that I will be a tad late with my New Year’s Post this time, since most of the rolls from this year haven’t been developed yet!

In any case, I better get to some pictures now since I’m also horribly behind on posting pictures. These pictures were actually taken in May 2016 during my low ISO challenge. At the time I was playing with my excellent Super Ikonta and these pictures remind me that I should really take it out for some more street shooting soon! The lens is simply superb!

Pictures taken with: Rolleicord V, Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 75mm f/3.5. Zeiss Super Ikonta C 530/2.

Starting with: Rollei / Rollei Retro 80s / Rodinal.