About the person
My name is Dickie and I’m old enough to know better, according to my mum at least.
I’ve been taking photos for many years, but only really got into it more after taking a course on black and white film photography and development. Discovering that this was a process easily completed at home, considerably more cheaply than sending films away, was the turning point.
I still take digital images too. There’s a level of convenience here that is unmatched.
I don’t have lots of toys and gadgets, and definitely not the latest and greatest camera gear, but I make the most of what I do have.
About the images
I have yet to find a specific niche for my photography. To that end, I’ll take pictures of anything that grabs my attention.
The digital images speak for themselves. Most are only tweaked slightly for colour or contrast, but mostly for crop. Sometimes an image will speak to me in a different way and I’ll try to have some artistic fun with it. It occasionally works.
My film photography journey is very much one of experimentation, or FAFO. I’m equally happy sharing the images that went wrong as well as those that came out as I’d hoped.
I often discuss the process and my own failings with it, but I’m also learning to spot issues with the cameras I use. Sometimes it’s a light leak, other times misaligned lens or viewfinder. These are the joys of picking up cheap cameras and ignoring the ‘spares or repair’ note at least until after I’ve mangled a roll of film through it.
My preferred film stock is whatever I can afford at the time. Most recently, Kentmere Pan 400 has been the go to. I do enjoy using Kodak TMAX 400 and Ilford HP5+ when I’m feeling flush. There are other films too and I’ll discuss those in the blog posts as and when I get around to uploading the galleries.
Away from photography, I dabble in livestreaming on Twitch (gaming, DJ-ing and photography streams). The photo above was part of a promotional thing for a twenty-four hour event I did in December 2023, raising money for the mental health text support service Shout. That was a fun thing to do and I hope to attempt something equally mad in the near future.
Dickie