Film Photographs - Davidson Inspired Photographs (Inner Character).

For my four initial ideas on my film strip, I wanted to continue my Davidson inspired idea of a character with a masked identity, I wanted to see how film photographs rather than digital would enhance the appearance of them, how an older looking grainy surface would link more to his work (50's) than my flawless digital photographs.

F16, filter 5, 15 seconds plus 7.5 second burn on background.

The tones in the trees here match the dark solid black of his clothing, although they contain enough/silver/grey tones to let his figure stand out, the line and shape is important to the composition because it forms it, we can see the black lines symbolising tree branches and silver tones for the grass which helps us determine what is what. Following my shooting plan I made use of the scenery and experimented with different types of shot/distance.

F16, filter 5, 12 seconds plus 3 seconds burning top right corner.

The smell and sense of touch is evoked here through the cigarette, a sense of rebellion or power created within his glance, the white looks dirty and smudged, the grey tones show the smoke rising. The depth of field would be more effective win the negative space if there was more of it to emphasise my use of this technique.

F16, filter 5, 14 seconds, didging on left side.

The negative was slightly under developed on the left side of this photograph, technically this isn't good but it reminded me of something ghostly or supernatural, he could be looking at something because compositionally he happens to be facing the same way, shadowing here is very effective, we can see the dark tones created from where the is standing. During developing the actual print a piece of it had uneven development, because I will be taking this photograph further for experimentation so I will correct this using the appropriate timing to achieve a better result. I used a gun toy as a prop added on from the mask and cigarette I decided to use following my shooting plan, this gave it quite a gangstah and menacing look.theme.

F16, filter 5, 12 seconds.

Here the depth of field is more obvious, the trees fad into the background rather than taking over the picture, lines on his hat are visible and also on his collar where they are more visible and contrasted, the white is what we are drawn to first, the range of tones are various from white to solid black which works well compared to the greys of the hands, it almost acts as a high lighter to what we are meant to focus on (what is more bright/dark) - the face, black clothing and depth of the structure of the face created from the mask shape.

F16, filter 5, 12 seconds.

Here I attempted to capture the smoke more fictively and this worked, it created a sense of smell and cold to it because of the pale misty look it created. It also looks like the mask is fading away and it blend sin to the effective depth of field of the trees, I prefer the background of the previous side shot photograph because he looks more unnatural and relaxed, I find that this pose looks too planned and false because of the angle it has been taken from, it is more unusual to see someone from this angle so it didn't work as effectively.

F16, filter 5, 15 seconds plus 7.5 second burn on middle to right of photograph.

This was a zoomed in shot of him standing isolated, it avoids the scenery slightly here and instead focus son him, I like the way he is the centre of the frame and we are instantly drawn to his menacing and piercing glance which we are directly face to face with, the formal elements work well here because of how contrasted they are with his clothing, the bold black of the suit is what makes him so dark and creates the shape of his figure that we are drawn to.

As you can see I focused on framing the photographs in a similar way as I had done with my digital shots because the whole idea was to recreate this but on a more technical level in the darkroom. I am pleased with how my shots turned out because of the contrast I have been able to achieve in the darkroom, although for improvement, next time I shoot a roll of film I will be sure to examine it after developing to see if it is in need of extra fixing time so that I don't get slightly under exposed parts on the negatives themselves. I would also have liked to take more photographs of this subject, originally the 24 exposure film was meant to give me 8 exposures for each of my 3 starting ideas but I only got 6 because of accidentally exposing part of the film by opening the back of the camera.