My mummy says she can’t afford it, but this year I would really like a Fujifilm Finepix S200EXR digital camera, mummy also says I shouldn’t know what one is because I’m only 9 years old, which I considered rich coming from a person who considers the World Wide Web some form of adhesive used for large picture frames. An…d so dear Santa now that you have are online perhaps you could make my dreams come true this year (£395 from warehouseexpress.com), I hope your reindeer are keeping well, and please send Richard the rat something, he is getting board of his annual magnetic chessboard set on the basis that he regards it as food.

Having started the process of clearing my apartment in preparation from a possible home-move I have put aside my faithful Nikon D70 digital SLR. The various compact flash cards, USB cables and memory card readers, all associated with digital photography, have no been packed away for future times. Instead I turn back to film photography.

I wish to revisit the golden rules of photography in their purest form, the art of composition, light metering and framing, and I wish to do this through the means of a mechanical camera – something I can learn from, something tangible. Selecting a menu option and cycling through the backlit options to digitally attune composition and white-balance holds no value for me now, simply put, I am bored with digital manipulation – though I will never entirely dismiss its fun and ease of use (the real skill these days is in film).

And so, I have acquired a Fujica STX 1 35mm all mechanical film camera (with the hopes of purchasing an Olympus OM20 soon). A compiled HTML instruction manual for the Fujica can be found here:Instruction Manual

The film I have chosen is Ilford HP5 ISO 400 black and white. Results will be uploaded once the film has been finished and subsequently developed and scanned – all part of the joy of film photography.

We cannot learn anything new, only remember that which we always knew, and though the keys are hidden from me, I believe there are doorways I haven’t opened and windows I am yet to look through, going forward may not be the answer, maybe I should go back, back to the roots. But then once I have found my way I must (as we all must) consider the following [courtesy of Oh, the Places You’ll Go – by Dr Seuss]:

Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

I have been a little inactive on the photography front of late, and so I decided to trawl through some of a large collection of scanned family photographs from old times and new, and thusly this shot is not of my doing but has value all the same.Back in the days pre-1980 my uncle Stephen owned a frisky Porsche 911, he later sold it and bought himself a home; wonderful picture with some real speed to it (ill try find out what racetrack this was taken on).

Here we have one of a collection (not all uploaded) of old shoe-box black and white prints from the family archives, not my work, but I have tried my humble best to present a digital copy.

Horses have always been in my family, here is a lovely warm picture of my mother and uncle (brother and sister) with their riding hats on, lovely texture in this picture. Almost unchanged with minor noise removed and a little cropping.

Here we have one of a collection (not all uploaded) of old shoe-box black and white prints from the family archives, not my work, but I have tried my humble best to present a digital copy.

The native dimensions of this photograph matched that of an old tea-card, however for this shot I managed to remove some of the more predominant scratches without loosing original detail. I have little information about this picture apart from its rough date which is around 1950s.

Here we have one of a collection (not all uploaded) of old shoe-box black and white prints from the family archives, not my work, but I have tried my humble best to present a digital copy.