The beginning
In January, I finally overcame my procrastination and enrolled in the beginner's black and white photography course at Street Level Photoworks. Recently I’ve found myself wanting to get back into photography, so I decided to start from scratch, delving into the basics and refreshing my film development skills.
The 5-week course covers a spectrum of topics, from the history of photography to shooting with an SLR camera, developing black and white negatives, and mastering the darkroom for creating prints.
Initially filled with inspiration after the first session, my enthusiasm took a hit due to a series of unfortunate events. Using my Canon EOS 300 35mm camera, I discovered there seemed to be something wrong with the shutter after loading the HP5 Ilford film we were asked to shoot before week two. I figured I’d just develop the roll anyway as it was my first time using a secondhand lensbaby composer. I thought if nothing else I could get some sort of idea of A. how the lens works and B. what was wrong with the camera shutter.
Week two brought another twist when I somehow, in a complete scatterbrained moment, brought an unexposed roll of lomochrome color film instead of the intended HP5 film I’d shot with my broken camera! I thankfully noticed about two seconds before the light was switched off so we could load our films.
The teacher gave me a random B/W roll of theirs to develop so at least I could join in.
Despite these mishaps, I loved everything about the week two session. I loved loading the negs, the darkroom, chemistry, and the whole development process, even if I had no negatives of my own images to show for it!
Immediately after class I joined Street Level as a member and I’m now armed with a fully functional camera and plans to redeem myself in the upcoming weeks by developing the neglected negatives and shooting more rolls.
This week's agenda includes printing a contact sheet and I plan on using preprocessed black and white negatives I shot last year – if I manage to remember to bring them with me that is.
Here's to hoping my journey back into photography takes a smoother turn!
Not Ilford HP5 film - not even B/W film for that matter.
