Living room - before and after

The rocking chair is an Ercol I thrifted. The picture on the wall of the cat and birds is my morning present from John. To the left you can see the suitcase I refurbished and in the window the globe I refurbished too.

Dining room - before and after

The table was my grandmothers and the chairs were a lucky thrift find. The method of hanging the pictures is one I stumbled across on Pinterest. The photos are some that I have taken mainly in Italy with my Brownie box camera combined with some small prints of London and Southampton (more thrift finds). The copper look lamp was another thrift find and the tea light holder is from Kvindesmedien.

My previous experience with the Brownie Box Camera taught me that keeping the shutter open for more than a snap shot will inevitably give blurry photos. I decided to try it out in stead with snapshots of landscape images and where better to do this than an archaeological park in Italy. Most of the photos as you can see below turned out fine. I got a bit nervous for them on the way home where the Italian airport advised me not to put film into the checked in luggage. I don’t remember seeing this sort of sign at Gatwick so I thought for a moment that the 3 medium format film I had brought out with me had been ruined even before I used them. However, that was not the case. The only problem with the film itself was the second one which I changed at Forum Romanum and just put back into the box without tape. When I took it out again it was a bit loose resulting in exposure of the last couple of images of Forum Romanum.

Along the way I also lost a  of photo (dark one) where the camera must have rolled on by it’s own in the bag. The is also a couple of overexposed photos (clear ones) where I thought I would be clever and leave the shutter open for a while to take in movement. I have learnt from this experiment that this does not work in daylight. Will try it again sometime at night.  I had a great time taking these photos and even though the brownie is bulky it is very lightweight and thus easy to bring around. I brought out 3 medium format films on which the brownie will allow me to take 8 photos each giving me 24 photos in total. In comparison with the 1000 photos we all took with various digital cameras on this holiday, 24 photos seem so few. However, once you get into the mind frame of wanting the perfect picture for the brownie it turned out to be quite hard to use all 24 photos.

As I wrote in a previous post I have a No. 2 Brownie.
I got an Ilford HP5 Plus film put in it and tried taking pictures with it this weekend. There where 8 photos on this 120mm medium format film and I used them all on portraits of hubby’s family.
As you can maybe see the camera still works. However, I took the portrait photos outside exposing the film for about 2 seconds each time. This did result in a certain amount of shaking and blurred photos.
I think in the future I will try and use the camera for landscape photos using the snapshot function to avoid blurred photos.

I have just been to the Media Workshop’s Darkroom course and have developed my first picture in more than 8 years. I went to the course mainly to refresh my memory before I begin going to the workshop on my own. However, I have learnt a lot of new stuff in just two evenings. When I learnt to develop black/white in my teenage years it was mostly a question of developing as many of my own photos as possible. It might be because of the last 8 years of taking digital photos that has made me loose interest in printed pictures so now I can concentrate more on the development process. I learnt tonight how to add a filter to change contrast and how to develop areas of a photo more or less by giving it 5sec more and covering up bits of the image with a waving hand. Very fun!
Can’t wait till tomorrow and being able to develop the medium format film from the no. 2 Brownie.

When I came back from the conference in the US my husband had been to the car-boot sale with his mate and surprised me with a 1930s No. 2 Brownie model F.

He was motivated but he fact that I have decided to take up black/white photography and development again. I used to do this when I was younger than I am now. Because it is at least 8 years since I have last been in a darkroom I decided to take up the Media Workshop’s offer of a quick course in darkroom use.
There I was pointed towards City Photographics, an independent photo retailer at Bedford place. Here I bought a 120 medium format film and was shown how to put it in the camera correctly.
I also found the old manual for the camera free online. Without this I would not have been able to take any photos at all.
This week I had my in-laws visiting and I used the opportunity to take loads of portraits of them with both the Brownie and a 35mm camera.
So now all that remains to be seen is whether any of the portraits I took with the Brownie are good or if it even works. I will have to develop them and see. I am so excited!