52 Rolls Week 12: The film that could have been… /  by Jacqui Booth

Except it so utterly wasn’t.

It was full of pictures of the Eden Project where I’d been for four amazing days as a participant on the Big Lunch Extras course for people who do astounding stuff in their communities (and they let me in too).

It was full of coastal paths, deserted beaches and an abandoned quarry that I’d explored alone, daring myself to stay an extra day and enjoy a bit of freedom far from home.

Hell, it even had conclusive proof that fairies existed.

Then I got tired and carelessly pulled the whole thing out of the dark bag with the backing paper.


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52 Rolls Week 11: Zeiss Ikon colour 120. The pits. /  by Jacqui Booth

Due to only having enough chemicals to cover 35mm film, not 120, I eventually had to send this to Peak Imaging for processing. The delay in popping this in the post meant that there’s been a strange hiatus between taking these photos and adding them here.  In terms of writing about them this isn’t good.  My mood has changed.  I’ve been really busy making myself a website at last, and sorting out some Instagram snaps for an exhibition at Brewdog in Leicester – plus all the other delights things that having two jobs and two kids entails.

Anyway, anyone who’s seen my Instagram stream will know that I’m not that keen on where I live.  A trail of photos entitled ‘Leicestershire: A Difficult Place to Love’ has most likely pissed off anyone who believes that Leicestershire is the bees knees.

Week 11 saw me heading to Watermead Park – basically wasteland, sandwiched between a few overgrown villages that reaches almost into the city itself.  The reasons for not really liking this place go on and on – in the last year my visits have been marred by me being hassled, meeting quite a scared runner who’d warned me away from an area from which she’d just been harrassed, giant clouds of gnats, floods, the vast amount of litter that hangs from the trees and the river banks after the floods and a path being closed whilst a poor woman was fished out of a lake.  Add that to my slight apprehension some years ago as a man with an entire spider web face tattoo appeared out of the mist one dawn and the traditional drowning of dog owners whenever the lakes ice over, then it’s a pretty grim place to hang out.  It’s not the first time I’ve taken pics here – a previous lot included a dead fox, a loo seat and a sodden stuffed hippo.  The weir quite often harbours a bizarre catch of ghee oil drums and coconuts.  And on my last visit I nearly trod on a condom.

But it’s within walking distance and vaguely countrysidey. It isn’t countryside of course.  It’s flooded gravel pits, but I’ll take it.

And sometimes – just sometimes – it can feel like an escape.

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52 Rolls Week 10: Polaroid Lifts. Sort of. /  by Jacqui Booth

It’s all got a bit manic here and I’m making some mistakes with my film choices.  Lots of them.  Basically I’m using whatever comes my way…which means that often I can’t get the processing done.  I need a batch of colour chemicals for 120 film – but I don’t drive and postage rates are high so they might as well be on the moon.

SO.  Keep it simple – do some polaroids on some expired film and lift em…job done.  I even watched a tutorial.

What follows is a how NOT to polaroid lift.

First of all, the pics turned out okay – praps a bit greyish blue, as the film is expired as usual to keep costs down, but better than last time.  I had pictures.

So – I looked at the tutorial closely, with squinty eyes and everything – my, that water looked nice and warm.  So very hot water was used.

By the end of the first evening I’d breathed in a lot of chemicals, peeled some layers and poked them around with a paintbrush, then chased my etherial gel like pictures round a developing tray or two, caught them on some different types of paper, hung them up in the garage and gone to bed feeling like quite a happy lassy.

Fortunately, the garage door was locked with the key in the morning so I couldn’t check them before I went out.  I can’t unlock the bloody thing myself, so it wasn’t until the evening that I discovered that all four of them had DIED in the night.

An anguished tweet was issued.

The next night I did nothing.

BUT – this thing has to be done.  So, I pulled up my big girl pants and thought really hard about how I could mess around with the pics without actually killing them.

This time, it seems prudent to do a ‘before’shot.

The crazy decorative edging was peeled off, and then what was left was popped into some warm water.  This meant I could peel off the black square that makes the backing.  I might have done this a little early…here’s another Leicester beauty spot!

And, as threatened, another photo of the new Little Bird SOS studio that we’ve been settling in to this last couple of weeks…well, mostly.  My bedroom is FULL OF WOOL, as is the dining room table.  Oops.

Anyway, for the last two Polaroids (below) I just kept the backing on and took off the fiddly silver strips.  Welcome to Polaroid half assed peels.  They’re scanned on black paper so you can imagine what they look like a little better.  I had a brief escape to the moors just South of Hebden Bridge as the House Mamil wanted to do a crazy bike ride.  The kids and I tagged along so I could navigate my first solo grown up hike.  Okay, that’s cheating really as one of my offspring is bigger than me and just as good with a map, but hey – we still got a bit lost.  If it wasn’t for my compass we’d still be there (I stupidly didn’t listen to the nice hippy wizard man who stopped for a chat).  This lack of navigational prowess/listening to good advice is worrying as the lanky offspring is away for the weekend soon to do his Duke of Edinburgh award.  Hmm.  At least I know he’s very calm in the face of being really quite lost and gradually sinking deeper and deeper into a marsh.

I rather liked some of the leftover backing papers too!

And that’s it.  I’m not entirely sure I’m going to be visiting this again in a hurry, but you never know!


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52 Rolls Week 9: Canon Ixus APS - Beer festival with the lads /  by Jacqui Booth

Hasselblad owners please look away now.  The following content may be disturbing.

Steps to quality photography:

1) Be given a 40 exposure APS film – a type I’d never seen before – by my neighbours.
2) Head to eBay for a 2nd hand camera.
3) Make the local Lofi group look a bit perplexed about suitable film dev reels.  They need to be smaller reels as the film is narrower than 35mm.
4) Talk to a mate about the horrors of scanning APS film.  It lives in its tiny reel post exposure so is as curly as you like.
5) Send the lot off to Photo Express in Hull to be developed.
6) Experience the joy of receiving photos through the post like the olden days.  Okay, they were on a CD, but you know…

Ah yes – there’s the middle bit – the taking photos.  For this level of technical photographic excellence I needed a Beer Festival in the Polish Club on the terribly inappropriately named True Lovers Walk in Loughborough and some really old drinking buddies.  In fact, I’m not entirely sure I’ve spent more than a few hours with this lot sober in the 20+ years I’ve known them.  Ahem.  As beer was clearly the priority here, the camera was put on the table, like a disposable camera at a wedding, and we did our worst…

I felt a bit bad about ambushing this poor man, but hey – he’s behind the bar at a beer festival.  It can’t be the worst thing that’s happened to him.

I did try and take some outside but I think my judgement was a bit off…the “Rubber Queen” bike wheel is less amusing when sober, and True Lover’s Lane is a bit horrid.

I’m particularly proud of the finger slightly over the lens.

We valiantly tried to bez through the 40 exposures but there were three left at the end.  There’s a setting on the camera to take C, H and P (panoramic?) printand the manual says that this can be changed mid rolls.  As you can see, the results are stunningly diverse.

 

 

 

Right, next time I’ll use a camera that’s a bit more proper.  Promise!

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52 Rolls Week 8: Fuji Instax. Abandoned office and a new beginning. /  by Jacqui Booth

I’m losing my way a bit here, but bear with me.  I knew there’d be glitches.

So – time to call in the Instax.  And a lunchtime trip to an abandoned office with the house mamil.  Fortunately,  I consider this perhaps more of a treat than a ribbon wrapped box from Pandora.  I think.  Okay, I’ve never actually experienced that but I’m pretty sure that half an hour spent with oddly itchy legs, carefully seeking out solid bits of floor whilst hoping nothing disturbed the falling in ceiling at that very moment is much much more the thing for me.

I’ve got mixed feelings about ‘urban exploring’, ‘ruin porn’ and that whole shebang but this was fun.  The water had poured through the roof, bringing down the false ceiling and great clods of insulation which let the light flood in, so it appeared to be illuminated.  I picked my way over loose parquet floor (which I figured must have been laid on a solid foundation) and felt a little better when I deduced that the pile of poo on a block of foam definitely wasn’t human.  I didn’t much fancy opening the door at the back of the office though…

The outdoor shots, still taken on auto, were over exposed.  I rather liked the mossy carpet at the back of the building and temporarily developed a strange infatuation with a tree that had grown in a rather tiny enclosed concrete square where the building didn’t quite tessellate.  Plucky little tree.

And then – to my amusement – I experienced that age old problem.  Two shots to take before the end of the ‘roll’.  So, the camera popped out in the rain to visit our new Little Bird SOS studio space.  It’s just on the edge of Leicester so we’ll get to gaze upon the National Space Centre from the balcony.  Expect to see a lot more of this scene, though hopefully slightly less grey!

And then it was time to have stab at parenting.  This photo is from my (brave) spot on The Teenager’s bed as I threw forward bits of design based help I’m sure he didn’t really need.  We’ve often spoken of the importance of taking photos of the ordinary and the lack of record of my teenage bedroom, which was some distance from ordinary and now only exists in folklore. Think Joe Orton’s/Kenneth Halliwell’s room crossed with the trappings of a teenage goth and you’re about there. For some strange reason my parents saw fit to obliterate it when I left.

Z keeps a much less alarming room, even though he’s inherited my noticeboard and doodlings.  I’ve just noticed that’s one of the first film shots I took and printed over his PC.  Aww.  Anyway, he’d actually asked me to take a proper picture to document his room so we’ll call this flash assisted effort a test shot.

NB.  I do not have a cat to waste my last frames on.  Well, I do – but I’ll need to dig her up.

This blog was first published on 52rolls.net