I’ve had over 100 rolls of processed negatives sitting in my filing cabinet in my home studio since February. The images in question are from India and Nepal. I’ve been too swamped with things to do as well as going full time with my photography workshop business to get round to working on them.

Pushkar

Part of the issue for me is that negatives are hard to review (I’d have to load them into the scanner 2 at a time) and contact sheets cost a bomb to get done at the time of processing. I really don’t mind paying to get film processed. Sure it’s costly, but the results are always worth it, but contact sheets at £5 on top of the cost of processing the film – is out of the question for me.

But here’s the thing, I joined a local camera club last year – Midlothian Camera Club. I do lots of talks around Scotland so I’m lucky to get to observe a lot of clubs and in general, I think most clubs are great. They’re all different, but the great thing is that you’re surrounded by folk who love photography. I just loved this little club because they were all so sociable and I was feeling that I needed to get out and meet some new friends etc. I think my reason for joining wasn’t really anything to do with learning anything, it was more about just being able to spend time around folks who like to talk about photography and ‘get it’. If you know what I mean.

Anyway, my little club has their own premises and dark room facilities.  So there I was last night at the back of the club doing my first contact prints (colour negative film onto black and white paper), aided by a long time member of the club (thanks Adam!). It was just such great fun being back in a dark room and before I knew it, I wanted to do some large prints.

Anyway, this photo is one of the images on the first contact sheet I processed last night. It’s cropped a bit, because the Indian in the scene was a very tricky customer to photograph. I couldn’t get near him and he was taunting me…. yet he was just so incredibly photogenic (in my mind anyway). This was shot on my Contax 645 with 140mm lens. I now have a 210mm lens for the kit which would have suited this subject better). He was a ‘rascal’ as we say here in Scotland.

So I don’t really know what the aim of this post is. Perhaps I’m suggesting that getting in touch with your local photo club is a good way to enhance your photography. I’ve met so many great people over the year in the club and I think I may be on the verge of entering the domain of trad dark room printing. But I also wanted to show you this shot, taken in Pushkar, a very religious place (similar to Varanassi). I’ve only just begun to dig into the negatives and will spend some time at my club this weekend developing more contact sheets, so I can decide on which images I need to load into the scanner tray……