Castle Park on Film

      Does everyone remember that bank holiday at the beginning of May when the sun actually shone for 3 days straight? I spent 3 lovely days walking around different places in Bristol lying on the grass reading and taking photos. I try and use my film camera more in the summer as I love how brilliant the light looks on film when the sun is shining. I bought 10 rolls of expired Fujicolor ISO 100 film from Ebay and I absolutely love the colours it brings out. I now don't want to use all the other old film I have because I know they won't be as bright...

     These images were all taken around castle park when I was trying to finish a roll before dropping it at Bristol Cameras for developing. I thought it was 24 exp and then turned out to be 36, which meant I had a lot more to use than I thought. 

      These were all shot on my Minolta X-300 with 35mm f1.7 lens - a great combination for walk around/street photography. This camera is pretty lightweight and simple to use, I managed to pick mine up from Ebay for £30 with the lens. Let me know what you think of these, if you have any other recommendations for colourful film let me know. 

Bristol on Film

      I have a stack of out of date film under my bed which included an Ilford HP5 ASA 400. I haven't shot black and white for many years and I wanted to try this film out with my Minolta X-300 and 50mm lens. It was nice to wander round a few areas of Bristol and get some grainy, contrasty images! 

Stokes Croft - Famous for it's street art, Stokes Croft has graffiti around every corner which changes on a regular basis!

The Bear Pit - The portal between Stokes Croft and the main shopping centres, this area has more street art, a fair few homeless often playing music in the tunnels and skaters making the most of the open space. I especially like the Donne Darko like messages sprayed on the walls and floor. 

Horfield - Perhaps not an "exciting" place but these few are on the 2nd January when the buses were running bank holiday schedule so I walked halfway to save sitting in the freezing cold! A very crisp icy morning!

Park Street/Bristol Museum/College Green - Park street area has such a huge amount to offer. The Museum is free to enter with a huge amount to see. Park street has many independent shops, restaurants and cafes with college green at the bottom where you can sit on a bench and watch the world go by, or pretend you are in Skins (if anyone reading remembers back that far!). 

The final frame - this is just a happy accident from the end of the film. One of the things I love about film is when things like this happen and you get an interesting graphic image which you would never get digitally. Let me know what you guys think!

Life Drawing in Bristol

      I have recently changed jobs which means I have a lot more evenings free and I have used this time to try and make the most of living in Bristol and trying out new things! The last time I did any life drawing was in my second year of university 4 years ago and even normal drawing I am very out of practise. 

      I found that there were circus themed life drawing sessions at The Island in the city centre where they have a circus training space. As someone who takes aerial circus classes already I was really excited to try this and me and my friend Holly decided to go and flex our slightly underused drawing muscles.

      We went to two of the three sessions, each started with fairly short poses using rope, silks or trapeze. I was intrigued to see what types of poses we would do knowing that even posing for photos on circus equipment hurts a lot as there are many narrow pressure points and uncomfortable grips. I liked the way the models wrapped the equipment around them and used it to create interesting wraps and shapes for us to draw. 

      These sessions were untutored, which was nice because I am very out of practise, everyone just got on with their own thing. People were using all different materials, some just with sketchbooks some with large sheets of paper. There was no pressure with people walking around looking at your work it just felt nice to make marks and shapes and not worry about if something worked or not. 

      The people who ran the circus classes also have a regular spot at Cafe Kino on Gloucester road on a Monday evening. This week we decided to check it out.

We had two models, the one at the start was pregnant which was really interesting and beautiful to draw. I tend to prefer drawing women because they have such fabulous curves (sorry men).

      This session was a little different from the circus ones because we were able to draw longer poses, the two below were 20 and 40 minutes which gave a little more time to focus on adding more detail and working on the shapes. I will forever hate drawing hands, feet and faces, but maybe if I go to a few more sessions this will improve over time. 

      If you want to try out the monday life drawing sessions you can follow their facebook page here. It runs 6-8pm and costs £5 for the two hours with some basic materials available if you don't have your own. The circus sessions may be running again soon if you just keep an eye on their facebook page.