Adventures in film

As we didn't have a seminar today, I'm determined to catch up with my "academic" blogging. Last week at college consisted of the second day of "embedded book" seminars (Tuesday); the research practitioner lecture by the head of drawing (Wednesday) and some time to spend in the library before that; fabric printing on Thursday -- and the bonus, on Monday morning, of a session learning to process black-and-white film (that old-fashioned stuff).

So Sunday evening found us in the kitchen setting up lights and tripod, and I had to re-learn how to load film into a camera.

I wanted to photograph the surface of water, so the idea was to run water into a bowl at different speeds to make different kinds of ripples. Taking these pix digitally was possible only with a flash; I'm interested to see how a "real" photograph will differ from these -

On the day, fortunately we weren't doing anything that needed crucial timing when the fire alarm went off, and everyone spent some time milling around outside -

Back in the darkroom and we got through the process safely. For next time, the instructions are there to be read and followed:

After the baths in the magic chemicals, the film is hung in tall cabinets to dry. Other people took photos of sensible things -

In their protective sleeves ("dust is the enemy"), my bowls of water look a bit mouldy -
What will come out of this, then? I was too late to sign up for the printing workshop, so finding that out will have to wait a week or two...