Analogue Love/Hate

There’s been a resurgence of Arty/Retro/Hipster Love of film recently.  Starting I guess with the Lomo guys and I most recently found a more and more of this kind of stuff around the place.  I got the tour of Sample Studios recently and they even have a dark room (remember those?).

Now, I still own far more film cameras then I’m ever likely to use and every now and then hanker to pick them up, fire the shutter and even tempted to fire off some of my few remaining film rolls.

If only I had the time.

But recently the reality of my film days was brought back to me with a bump.

I recently started leafing through my archive of neagtives looking for a nostagic picture of Mrs Lamb in order to make her Birthday card.  Lots of really lovely old stuff in there and I took more time than I had available to look through those photos.

Amongst them I found a couple of images from my Student Days that I’d had half a mind to scan up so having dusted off the film scanner I ran them through.

Lovely shots (OK I might do more with the location now) but holy cow just how much crap is on that negative!!!

We’re talking, scratches, damaged emulation, dust, drying marks – plus substaintial grain issues.  All that nostaglia about the details of the baths: the signage, the tiling, the scoreboards is now masked with crap.   Now this was probably a home-cooked negative so much of the responsibility is mine.  But I had no better luck with most labs.

Going digital was the first time I got full control over my end-to-end workflow.  Aside from the ability to chimp, the flexibility and speed of digital.  I finally got the quality of finish I was looking for.

Here’s the final, cleaned up image (there’s probably more that could be done with this).   For anyone interested in the original scan it’s available here.

The Loughborough Colleges 25yd Pool, circa 1991
The Loughborough Colleges 25yd Pool, circa 1991

St Anthony’s School Confirmation and Communion

We sent flyers into St Anthony’s School today about availability for the Confirmation on the 10th April and the Communion on the 27th April.

We’re available for Gallery Sessions and sessions at home or on location (Hotels, Restaurants etc) on both days although we are starting to get booked up for the 27th already.

The range of sessions and packages is designed to be flexible to allow you to get Quality Professional Photographs on your child’s day.  We’ll make sure you get a great momento of your family looking their best.

If you have a Confirmation or First Communion at St Anthony’s this year, give us a call to enquire about a session to suit you – 021 429 3714

If you’d like to arrange a session to mark the event on another day then that’s no problem – often people prefer to get the pictures taken when they can be more relaxed.  All the same options for sessions and packages are still available.

With the other posts here on the blog, the information about the sessions and the packages are slipping down the main page so I’ve now anchored a link to the top of the navigation bar to make it easier to find.

St Athony's School Confirmation

Holidays

It’s been pretty hectic here trying to get everything back to all the families who I was with for Communions ahead of our holidays next week.  I want to post more images but hopefully I’ll get time to put some up soon.

In the meantime, on the holiday theme, I came across this small slice of fun: what a couple of photographers / videographers do when they’re stuck in an airport overnight.

The full post has more info about these guys (including a Q&A).

I hope this doesn’t happen to too many people over the summer (especially our Aussie visitors – watch out for that Ash guys!)

Young Entrepreneur Award

There’s been lots going on since Christmas and I’ve had to neglect the Blog while I get on planning for communions and a few other things that I hope to be announcing on here over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, family life continues and that now includes visits to the Gallery by many keen supporters.

Our Marketing Guru at Work

The Young Fella has taken to coming in to the Gallery, grabbing business cards and flyers and going out on the street to hand them out (well they do bear his picture after all).

I can’t knock his enthusiasm to promote the business so I guess the pupils and staff of Eglantine School are just going to have to get used to him as they go by on their way to the Park!

How Photography Connects Us

“The photo director for National Geographic, David Griffin knows the power of photography to connect us to our world. In a talk filled with glorious images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.”

Nothing much I need to add here.  If you have 15 minutes to watch this video – it is well worth it.