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From the archive. I don't know care about the blog or internet in viewing this photo much but this photo looks great on print. I enlarged it for a friend's coffee shop which is now sadly closed. Another thing pandemic taken away.
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| Galata Bridge: Early morning fishing. |
Very common thing to photograph when you are traveling or on the streets with BW film in your camera.
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| Pigeons and Kids |
Ever since post pandemic I have taken more and more post production, darkroom, printing, enlarging, and colour proofing jobs and the amount of photography I did has taken a back seat in my work life. Even back then before the pandemic I have taken my Digital camera out of my camera bag and went in full analog as a working professional photographer. It was and still is a shock for most of my clients to hear that I shoot film and I have to also explain to them by film I mean negative film and not movie film like on Hollywood. I still tell them vast majority of my work that the work they saw and liked and hired me for are actually analog and they hired me for that reason and they wanted to have photos like I had in my previous work or in portfolio, but they got too comfortable with seeing things as they are shot and too comfortable with having option of 1500+ photos to chose from.
Sundays are usually cleaning days. This Sunday the flat was pretty clean to start with and my girlfriend finished the cleaning while I was exercising. So after taking her to my local pub for sunday roast, I decided to clean my lenses, Nikon camera bodies and re-calibrate autofocus on my Nikon D800.
Calibrating lens is something that you can do only in Digital SLR cameras and maybe mirrorless but I don't know about them since to this date I have not used mirrorless camera because big bulk of my work is shot on medium format film and I keep a digital camera for the fast turnover or small budget shoots.
In future posts I'll be writing more about lens calibration.
Next project I am working on is with my classmate Carolina. We are both graduates of LCF class of 2013 and both of us had to learn to climb before we learned how to run. Maybe that's why despite not agreeing in creative direction all the time we still get along and understand each other.
In projects where lots of creatives will be getting together to create a body of work, the photographer shouldn't disappoint. This is why I would like to go to the location before the shoot and get some tests to see the rough idea of the frame and observe the environment. In doing so, I will be prepared with scenarios where the shooting conditions changes, I now know the direction of the sun and how it will be setting, the areas that will be covered in shadow and how big of a diffuser will be needed if we need one.
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| The cat invasion of the set. |
Sometimes I see something that has a story and take a photo of it. I call it wasting film some call it street photography and others call it art. Why do I call it wasting film? There is a story behind this shoes and how they got dirty, the story of the person wearing them, the story of how they get here, but in the medium of street photography it's just one or two photo snapped and move on the next one. Entire photoshoot or documentary project is not happening. We are just left out with our imagination.
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| Photography by Bugra Ergil Shot on Mamiya RZ67 Pro II + 110mm f2.8 + Trix Shot at 1600 |
With the advancing technology we are seeing more and more video based media. Instagram reels, TikTok, YouTube shorts, infinite scrolling of media consumption changed our lives for better or worse. Among those video based media, photography and other art forms started to take backseat in the algorithm, but every now and then an unforeseen event unfolds and despite the videos and different angle coverage, a photograph speaks the loudest.
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| Photo by: Evan Vucci |
An assassination attempt which drew blood on a ex-president who is also running as presidential candidate for next American election is very rare thing to see and just as rare to photograph. This event alone will bring more media and attention to all future Trump rallies.
This photo has already been published in majority of the newspapers around the world, very soon it will be published in the Time Magazine, probably will make the next issues cover and sooner or later you will be able to buy high quality prints on Magnum photos or other websites. Evan Vucci will be forever know as the photographer who captured this moment.
I have been going to Pride in London once every couple years. In the beginning of my studies at London College of Fashion I could't go since it clashed with my Family planned holidays. Don't forget I grow up without my family since I was 13 and my sister went to University in America in her early 20's, which meant that every holiday opportunity was utilised and planned with my family. I was just around 24 I told my family that I can't just spend whole summer on the sea because I'm working now. Now looking back at it, I feel I was soo privileged to be able to spend my summers in that way.
Moving back to Pride. It was just as packed as 2018 pride which was my last time before this time. In comparison to my first time there to last time. It is a lot more tame and less wild but also so much more advertisement happening in it.
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| Packed pride: Shot with F6 + 24-70mm f2.8 Kodak Gold |
When processing Black and white negative film, there are many developers and film. Often times people overlook the agitation methods. When seeking for the correct way to process film I came across multiple recommendation by film and developer makers and even communities.
Kodak recommends 30 sec continues agitation then 5 second agitation every 30 seconds whereas Ilford suggests 15 to 30 seconds continues agitation then 5 to 10 second every minute. Then again on the inside of the Ilford film box It states that 10 seconds continues agitation then 10 second agitation intervals every minute, same goes for Kentmere films.
So I decided to test some theories my self. Although I would not consider these very scientific test since I used Expired film roll and the light was chancing from f2.2 to f2.5 which I adjusted with shutter speed. I wanted to test what happens if over agitate.
These tests were never in my plans, I was actually testing the light sealing on my cameras and film magazine/backs. Then I told my self why not shoot 2 of these quick test set up I made in my kitchen and see. These tests gave me a rough idea about the over agitation of BW negative film.
I don't know if I will shoot more test like these since film isn't cheep and processing them individually to isolate them is time consuming but if I do, I'll post it my findings here in my blog and write about it in reddit to get approvals of random internet strangers to feel good about my findings.
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| 30 seconds then 5 seconds every 30 seconds interval |
In the photo above I agitated for 30 seconds then again for 5 seconds every 30 seconds. Considered to be normal or one of the acceptable methods. This Produced close to accurate results both in test photo and also in rest of the roll it is apparent that the film was expired in a non gracious way (out of fridge).
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| 60 seconds then 30 seconds every 30 second interval |
On this photo above, I agitated the film for 1 minute then 30 seconds every 30 second intervals. It is noticeably more grainy and the shadows/blacks are loosing more detail than the previous photo.
Kodak Tri-x 400 shot at box speed and processed in Kodak Hc-110
So sometimes I like to walk around with a camera and ask random Cool Stylish people if I can photograph them. I'll post them more often in here with new title called On the street. Old fashion blog readers will get the title.
I was moving files around and making them make more sense in my hard drives and came across this shoot. I noticed that, the scans were very very very large in file size and colour was very off. I can see that I just wanted to scan them highest resolution as possible but pay little attention to colour. So I decided to scan them again in 3200DPI and focus bit more on the colour. I don't know where the colours went off but rescans colour was off too. Still it was more salvageble when compared to the originals. I think it was either the Colour of the flash used in the shoot or the chemistry accuracy in the Lab was off. I managed to get the colours to where I want them in this photo.
In late March 2023, Andy disappeared, and by the end of 2023, I learned why. I will not reveal his personal information here, but his disappearance affected the one enjoyable work environment I had: processing negatives. This also halted my access to free processing, adding more costs to an already expensive analog shooting process.
The post-COVID years have been challenging for my family and me. Since mid-2023, life has been particularly difficult. Despite my efforts to mask my sadness and turmoil, my girlfriend Samantha noticed and, being a great communicator, helped me by listening and encouraging me to help myself.
Moving forward, I will dedicate more time and resources to analog photography. I have already recovered a backlog of negatives and photos that I have yet to publish on my blog and portfolio. Some photoshoots are moving into the pre-production phase. I hope these efforts will rebalance my work-life in a direction I enjoy. Fingers crossed, by 2026, I aim to pursue a master's degree in photography, thirteen years after graduating from UAL-LCF in Fashion Photography. I want to delve deeper into darkroom techniques and work in ways digital photographers cannot. Learning digital photography gets easier every day, while mastering analog and darkroom techniques is becoming increasingly challenging.
Final image of the edit I done in last post. Gotta say I love Kodak Portra 800, favourite colour film, only downside is hard to find and more expensive than others.
Photography Bugra E & Carolina M
Model: Anna W
After I edited the images for the client, I started to edit some for my Print Portfolio however during the time I was editing them I deiced to do update my Mac, and somehow my desktop without my approval, decided to sync to apple cloud which is just dumb because there is not enough space to cover all the PSB and TIFF files I was keeping on my Desktop. The automation decided to remove the files that can't be placed in cloud and place in the cloud that doesn't have space, so in less than a minute all the photos were gone, not in desk top not in cloud, there were just empty folders in the could server. Fast forward to 2024 Latest cloud update, I found a way to recover the photos and I still don't know how I did it. Since 2019 pandemic happened I got hit by pickup truck bought a Flat etc... another reason for blog post which I'll be actually writing.
