Brewdog Summer Exhibition / April 19, 2016 by Jacqui Booth

I've got five of my Instagram pics in the Beer is Art Spring/Summer Exhibition, Brewdog, Leicester, from 28th April 2016, until...whenever the Brewdog summer ends! I'm guessing they'll be there until September if the brackets hold.*

The pics are actually from the tail end of my pictorial grumblings "Leicestershire: A Difficult Place to Love" in which I photographed the many reasons why I'm disgruntled with the county I find myself in. I gather that there are people who truly love Leicestershire. Not me though. My whingings must have been as unwelcome as fingernails on the blackboard.

Still, on I went. Then I started to spend more time in the City Centre, and you know what? It's still undeniably grotty in places but I don't mind it so much. Perhaps it's because I spent so long working there but I actually have a kind of affection for it. And so I began to mellow.

Seeing as Brewdog is slap bang in the City Centre I chose these pictures for their Summer Exhibition...

Imagine waking tomorrow and all music has disappeared

And here's a couple of them hung. Yeah, I should have tried to do a good job but I was off to get my tea and head to a gig, so another time perhaps!

Thanks to Brewdog for having me again :)

* A debt of gratitude goes to JMD's Hardware in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire which was where I found myself with my family when I should have been at home being better prepared. The nice lady, in her post flood-damaged recently refitted shop, cheerily sold me brackets, screws, a drill bit and some really bloody strong glue, without which I would have had to forego submitting my pictures and the house mamil would have experienced a simmering resentment for the entire summer.

52 Rolls - Week 3: Canon AE-1. Ghosts / April 8, 2016 by Jacqui Booth

Well, 36 shots is a lot to take. 35 came out okay (one was of me) and it seems a heck of a lot to inflict on folk, but praps if I make them small it won’t be so bad?

I continued with my idea of starting at my doorstep and working outwards. I was interested to find that if I felt self conscious taking a shot it came out wonky – so a couple have been straightened up in Lightroom to overcome my ineptness when taking photos as my neighbours whizz past in their cars (I tend to be greeted with “I saw you…” which is kinda worrying).

There’s three main things going on here – the park, the fields near the house and the graveyard which is stupendously popular for some reason. Try as I might to loiter around on my own I always find myself skirting around avoiding folk who drive in, do whatever it is you do at graves, and drive off again. One of these days I fear someone is going to give me an earful (perhaps someone I lobbed a snail at, but that’s another story).

The park was sad. There’s no two ways about it. Full of memories of the kids being small. Not always good ones. We are unfortunately to be blessed with a familial group of children who we’ll call the Twatlets. Feeling safety in numbers they managed to make sure that my eldest’s visits to the park were generally unpleasant. But even the benches make me sad. Memories of talking with other exhausted mums about our worries for our children, which haven’t necessarily abated over time. But there’s happy stuff too – endless stamping across the tiny play fort, getting dizzy on the roundabout, or on the climbing frame with my tiny cousins. But very much a mixed bag of emotions that wasn’t an easy thing to take. I stayed and sat for a while, until a bewilderingly shouty dog owner came in and started stomping around. Time to leave.

The next day was a bit of a tour of my old favourites. The two fields are a familar place where I can just about pretend I’m somewhere else, though one was too muddy to bother with. The mud v reward quotient near home is very low and I’ve learned not to bother. I went as far as graffiti bridge and headed back. On the plus side I had the place to myself – a real rarity round here, where there are people EVERYWHERE. I explored a new bit near the railway bridge on the other side of the road where I marvelled at the ability of stoned folk navigating the steep dirt path a couple of years ago. Not that I saw them, but as I stood on the bridge in the dark I could hear (and smell) them…so I let off my camera flash. All went quiet and I giggled all the way home, knowingly imagining their paranoid befuddlement.

And so onto the graveyard with its iron railings, lurid flower displays, sad fake roses and my fave one armed cherubim. And strangely constant stream of visitors. Christ, it’s a popular place.

Then – after bottling it earlier – it was time for the lightening struck house. No-one was working on it, though with my back to the shops I felt a bit conspicuous. Questions will be asked next time I’m in the chemist. Late last summer I sat on my bed with my scared son, looking out of the bay window, not too close to the glass though in what I considered to be a wildly conservative precaution. As I sagely spoke about how safe we were, there was an almighty bang. Lightening had struck and a protective urge (that I was relieved to find I had) caused me to cover my scrawny lad. Still, the utter danger of the situation was not quite realised until the three fire engines arrived and flames licked ferociously out of the gable end. My kids now have pretty good reason not to feel reassured by anything I say…

So that’s it. I guess I should do the technical stuff. In fact – let’s have a heading:

Technical Shit: Cold water developed

Expired Kodak Colour Film ISO 200

Pre soak 20 deg water 2-3 mins, with waggles
Dev 20 mins at 22 deg, inverted and stuff continuously for 15 seconds, then agitated every 30 seconds
Water rinse 20 deg 2.5 mins, with waggles
Bleach 10 mins, agitated every 30 seconds
Water rinse 20 deg 2.5 mins, with waggles
Fix 10 mins, agitated every 30 seconds
Water rinse 20 deg 2.5 mins, with waggles
Gloves on (at last?)
Stabiliser, in a jug, film chucked in for a minute

Hung in garage, gloves off, accidentally handled carcinogen covered film whilst wet anyway. Duh.
Moment of panic that nothing had happened.
Relief.

This blog was first published on 52rolls.net

52 Rolls - Week 2: Holga, the mustard one… / April 5, 2016 by Jacqui Booth

Ah, week two. Well, let’s just say I’m better prepared for week 3, but this was a bit of a landmark week for me as, after taking loads of advice, I developed my own film whilst the male things watched Star Wars. Of course, the kids stormed the kitchen for snacks the moment the tricky develop/30 second stop/fix needed doing, but hey. I have pictures.

For the purposes of 52 rolls, to make things extra difficult, I have a cunning plan. For years I’ve worked for a website that started with the maxim of starting at your doorstep and working outwards (that’s you, Cathy C). Of course, the philosophy has now changed but I’m darn well going to reclaim this idea, so that hopefully there will be some sort of aim to my 52 rolls plan, rather than wazzing away a lot of film and chemicals. I will of course digress often, as the website did, to meet needs as they happened – but hopefully there will always be a few pictures that follow this path.

So, last week featured my inner sanctum – physically in the form of my front room. I’m going to get all the way out to the back garden this week. Get me. This ties in with some very grumpy posts I’ve been adding to Instagram called Leicestershire: A difficult place to love. Probably the least I say on this subject the better, but perhaps I’ll grow to like it a bit more over the next few weeks? Hmm.

I’m not going to list all the developing times (though I’ve had to give in and note them down on the film backing paper) but I am going to vaguely wonder what made my film mottled, as has happened before with a different film/developer. It could be the mustard Holga I borrowed…but it’s most likely my general lack of care and attention that means that the cameras are kept in my office conservatory – not a room known for it’s temperate climate. It is ICY right now.

I’m also going to give a little bit more thought to perhaps not getting the negatives covered in dust. But then life is short and I probably don’t care that much. Better to get on and get things done!

And a few leftovers from week 1, still hanging around, like festive stilton in the fridge.

This blog was first published in January 2016 on 52rolls.net

52 Rolls - Week 1: Fuji Instax Mini 90 Neo Classic / April 5, 2016 by Jacqui Booth

This is absolutely the last thing I should be doing. I’m already behind. And despite there not being many rules, I’m probably going to break them straight away. Yep, there’s no exif data so I could fib. But I won’t.

Besides, week one involves a film finished on the 1st January. Okay, when it’s a ‘polaroid’ then yes, it’s a bit of a cheat, but for starters that’s just how I’m going to have to handle it! Next week I will be good. Or good-er. I have cameras with film left in them that will need to be cleared so you might see this cheatery – film finished that week – come into play again. Bear with me. One of them is my grandad’s camera that I’ve reserved for photos of the family so there’s no rushing that…

Anyway, I want to share this first off. It’s not what I normally do, and it’s not going to get artistic types stroking their chins and going “ahhh” or technical folk admiring my techniques. Far from it. I am even a bit ashamed.

What I want to try to express here is the sheer pleasure we all got from this basically unnessary, too expensive medium. The whole family loved the process, and I loved seeing them take part in the pictures – posing, waiting for them to develop, stashing them away whilst I got on with other stuff, looking at the results. I watched a friend smile as he looked through them. Yes, he could have been being polite (or it could have been the wine) but I hope he felt a little bit of the joy I feel as I sift through them, taking pleasure in being able to hold the little rectangles of film, the unusual tangibleness of them being THERE in their handily designed holdable ‘pouches’, rather than being beamed from a screen.

So, here we are, clowning around having festive fun, hanging out in Matlock for the Boxing Day raft race and taking New Year pics. Any further introduction can wait for now…

Okay, there’s some technical stuff. The camera is a Fuji Instax Mini 90 Neo Classic. The black one. Most shots were taken indoors with the red eye reduction turned on. And the cheapest film can be found on eBay. Buy in bulk!

Two shots were taken by my son. The ones with me in them. That’s quite enough information, I think!