http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk 35
because I love landscapes, still life
and travel – and the beauty of the
Earth. It’s hard to define myself as
one kind of photographer. I would
say I am an “analogue”
photographer – that’s concrete.’
Why film?
‘Shooting film allows me to slow
down. When I shot digitally I’d take
thousands of pictures. Shooting film
allows me to think harder about my
composition, and to concentrate on
apertures and shutter speeds – to
think about the science of
photography. It also allows me a
plethora of opportunities to explore
darkroom printing and alternative
processes. I’m working on salt
printing and am trying gum
dichromate printing – but am
finding that hard. I don’t think
analogue is better than digital, but
I like my film images much more,
for sure – there seems to be more
depth to them. It’s more tactile.
‘Making colour prints will be
intrinsic to my practice, but as I’m
still learning it isn’t yet. At the
moment I print using inkjets, but
eventually I want to produce
platinum prints. If I can get there itwill be a beautiful thing, but if I can’t
it won’t be the end-all of my
practice. I’m attracted to the science
of darkroom work – pouring
chemicals on sensitised paper and
the image appearing is like a dance.
It also gives me so much control.
‘There’s a level of trust too: trusting
my tools, trusting what the image
will look like if I use Ilford Delta
3200, what the image will look like if
I use Kodak Portra 400 – and trusting
that the image will come out exactly
the way I expect it to because
I worked on understanding the
process. It doesn’t always turnAbove: Trinidadian
broadcaster
Ardene Sirjoo, at
Fondes Amandes
Spring, St Ann’s,
Trinidad. Shot on
Yashica Mat-124G
with Portra 400