Recently I’ve been shooting Little Stone Wood colour 5x4 film.

Initially I was reluctant to use 5x4 film for a couple of reasons. The first was the expense as it works out to be £5.50 a shot and when you are a student and every penny matters, this was a major concern. However, my tutor said that we can claim some expenses up to the value of £100 which then made using this film an option. Plus, I was also able to find some film going cheap on eBay (it was nearly out of date) which then meant I had found an affordable supply.

The second reason for my reluctance is that it seems that every landscape photographer uses large format colour film. Consequently I then thought that if also used the same then the results would be predictable and unimaginative. However, I am now of the opinion that the reason why every landscape photographer uses large format film is because it is the format that suits the medium best. It’s a case that this equipment would not be used to photograph a premier league football match because a DSLR with fast autofocus, good ISO range and high shutter speeds are much more suitable and vice versa, that a DSLR can be used but wont capture the same level of detail and would encourage a quicker and less reflective way of working.

Below are the photographs that I have taken and they basically fall into two categories. There are four that are self portraits where I am within the frame but in the distance and the others are just normal landscapes.

I feel that the self portrait images work the better out of the two categories. By having a person in the shot then it help the viewer to achieve a sense of scale and can emphasise the sense of reflection. Also by being in the distance and not prominent it emphasises being part of the landscape. This is also strengthened by looking away from the camera and looking into the landscape sets myself as being within and part of the landscape.

Col 5x4-16 & 20 are probably my two favourite ones. No16 because I am dwarfed by the landscape, it dominates the scene and I am only a small part of the frame. Plus it shows the rich texture of the forest and even though it’s winter time and everything appears to be sleeping, it still looks wild and alive. No20 I like for similar reasons, it looks like I am entering a world which is unruly and unknown. Again, it shows the texture of the forest but as I am this side of the fence I am separated, not part of the forest yet.

On a technical level, I need to be more careful with the colour balance. I have printed these in the colour dark room and the Fuji film produces a green colour cast, something that I did expect (Kodak is normally a magenta cast and all films have a colour cast that need to be filtered out.) However with these scans, and now having the results side by side, I can see that the colour balance is uneven between them. This is something that can be easily tweaked within photoshop, but is something I do need to be more mindful of.

With both of these images there is a sense of reflection. This I feel is important because it then emphasises how the environment can help to produce that sense of inner reflection and contemplation.

Below are all of the colour 5x4 negs that have been scanned, but they’re not edited. It also looks like the scanner has overexposed them and they appear washed out but can be adjusted in photoshop.