Lickey Hills

South of Birmingham, July 15th

This is from my first deliberate go with expired film, a roll casually thrown at me by Gareth a few weeks back that I’d been putting off using. After all, what if I took a wonderful photo and it came out all shite cos of the film? How tedious would that be?

The end result is quite a relief, especially when you compare it to my digital shots from the same day. Yes, they both have their merits but I’m bored with the cleanliness of digital at the moment. Too crisp, too perfect. These shots on film that should have been binned in 2004 have a bit more character, even if it’s that they look like they’re from the 70s.

They way I see it photography is like a big field with different disciplines and techniques scattered all over it. I’m moving around that field, dipping into this and that to see what I can learn from it. Right now expired film has me mildly excited. Next week I’ll see how I feel about high speed Ilford black and white. In a month or so I’ll be onto something else (I recently scored something interesting on eBay but you’ll have to wait and see what it is) and there’s still plenty more to explore.

That I’m happy with the art of expired is a good thing. Gareth, Alex, Andy and I clubbed together on a motherlode of the stuff on eBay last week. 164 rolls of it, some dating back to 2000. Eek.

Expired set on Flickr where I’ll be dumping more of this sort of thing.