The 35mm Project

Greetings!

Over the past month i have been to New York, Notting Hill Carnival, working, getting ready for my final year of University, weddings, parties and all sorts of things!

A member of The Camera Club which i am holding an exhibition at in January prompted me to shoot a roll of Provia 100F next as it was one of his favourite colour films. So i did just that! To my surprise the negatives are positives which upon opening my parcel from the lab i use to process colour film i had a moment of nostalgia of KodaChrome slides.

Notting Hill Carnival was the beginning of my Provia journey, the sun was beating down on London creating a gorgeous deep blue sky and it was hot. I hadn’t realised how big the carnival was as i had never been before, setting off around mid day i covered a massive area eventually walking through to Paddington Station.

Unfortunately the carnival was not what i expected, it was interesting to see various crowds of people and performances however it seems bare and instead of stalls of things to see and do it just contained a lot of food stalls and huge crowds of drunk people. I was wondering where the colour was, where the entertainment was! There were the odd crowds of people dressed in flamboyant outfits with feathers and displays however it got a bit tiresome after seeing one area like this and moving onto the next with exactly the same costumes.

I decided to leave the rest of the film for my trip to New York City, albeit panicking they may x-ray my luggage. There was no fogging on the film so *phew*

New York City is amazing, it is by far the best holiday i’ve had to date, my friend and i did everything you can think of. Helicopter rides, Brooklyn, Uptown, Downtown, Midtown, Greenwich VIllage, Chelsea, Hells Kitchen, Central Park. You name it we did it, we also managed to get into some private rooftop parties for celebrities, check out the local bars, clubs and restaurants and also make some new friends along the way.

Due to this being my first time in NYC i think i went a bit touristy with the photos initially. The film i shot after this in my opinion is better, however it’s black and white and typically i favour the tones, contrasts and nuances of black and white over colour.

The film itself is covered in dust, wether this is an error in processing or a bad cover of emulsion i am unsure but considerable cleaning was required during retouching. Also scanning positives on my scanner seemed a little strange, the colours of the positive when looking directly at the film look saturated and sharp however my scanner seems to have lost some of that saturation, i tinkered with various settings for a considerable amount of time however didn’t come up with anything satisfactory until i imported the files into photoshop for a general retouch and clean up, there was also a green colourcast over the photos which had to be removed.

I have also found that the photographs are a stop or so lower than i originally anticipated when shooting. I haven’t had this sort of problem before so i’m concerned feel that the chemicals during processing where a little strong and the develop has carried on too far. If this continues i will have to change the company i use to develop my colour film.

The Provia has handled well in America and although my shots are somewhat touristy for this roll it demonstrates some of the qualities on Provia 100F. It has a beautiful fine grain and deep blues. The original positives look fantastic. If i was printing from an enlarger i’m sure the results would be stunning. I will shoot with Provia again but use a different Lab to develop the film to get a satisfactory result.