So here is Martin, I met him one day when it was snowy, I was young, and me and my best friend saw him walking down the road, we threw a snow ball and hit him on his back. Since then we have stayed in contact and had conversations in the street outside of his house. 

We talked about our music interests, hobbies, work life and childhoods. Martin has been a waste refuse truck driver for 20 years or so, He absolutely loves the classic musicians such as, Queen, Abba, Joe Brown, Pink Floyd among others, is an avid wine drinker and lives on his own in High Wycombe, my home town. We talked about music and I told him my childhood and my experiences with music stars such as Frida from Abba and John Lord from Deep Purple. He was amazed and told me that he was actually Bruce Willis's brother-in-law. Which I never believed until I searched his name one day. 

Life is funny sometimes, the way we met and the situations we are both in is just so interesting its a funny story. 
The image above for me works very well as a stand alone documentary photographs that represents this man is an honest way, that also gives the viewer a glimpse into this mans home. 

Martin actually give me the camera which these photographs were taken on, his sisters Canon A1. He gave it to me in pristine condition with a few lenses and in its original bag etc. A few months after he gave me the equipment I went back to his to shoot him in his home. The camera has been my main shooter since and came to the top of snowdon with me recently.  

After having the large format lecture with Lisa, I was thinking for the module how to create some photographs that test me, technically, physically and mentally. So I decided to take out the large format camera from the stores, I bought 1 sheet of Provia 100, E6 film and 5 sheets of HP5+. With the aim to make one photograph that represents wonder, the feeling of going into the unknown. By using a Sinar with a 150mm lens and 3 dark slides, I am completely changing the processes I usually work with, I'm upgrading the size of film, the quality but also slowing everything down. It is a lot harder to take a photograph, let alone frame it and to just see the frame is exttremely hard. 

Me and my house mate, Will decided to go to Snowden the day before a storm, we got to the base of the mountain a 2 am, slept in the car then headed out at 6:30am to get the first light image. We seemed to be the first people going up the 'Minors Track' the hardest route to the top. I had the 5x4 camera on my back in a bag with the monorail sticking out, it was very awkward and it fucked my back up., Will was taking the tripod for me so that helped. 

This was my first time in Wales, I was completely in the unknown, heading to the highest point in the UK. I knew I was going ot be tested in every way, I knew I could do this challenge physically but my aim was to create some photographs along the way and at the very peak. Anyway prior to this adventure I had been researching and getting up tp date with the equipment, getting it all out and rpetentind to shoot with it. just looking at things throuhg it is beautiful, and its upside down too. I have also been living with large format photogpahers for a few years so I assume my influence has come from that but also the change my style and to create some new work too. 


We took our first shot at the base of the mountain, it came to me when we were watching the wind hit the lake on the water and it created surface waves that wizzed aacross the lake at crazy speeds as there was a storm on the way we had a few gusts. So I set the camra up where we were stood and toldWill when I was going ot take the shot so he was facing the waves , and looking otwards towards the lanbscape and into the unknown with wonder. 

Tje lighting this day was not great, but we had a few moments of sunlight and the E6 shot was taken at the brightes point that morning, first light. We headed up and took a few more shots, Will had a fag and we collected some water fromt he streams running off of the mountain. The shot of Will sat crossed legged on the rock was taken 30 seconds before a hail storm, up there at high altitute the weasather was changing and the light was changing every second,, so this shot was simply Will paintiently waiting for me to take his photograph. 

​We reached the top 
  

This module has been fun and has opened up an avenue of a new way of presenting my work, using different materials for final output. printing onto handmade cotton rag paper using liquid light was something I had always wanted to try and to see, I feel from looking back at my initial ideas for the project I have achieved my aim, 8-10 darkroom prints using an alternative process.

Since the project stated I have photographed a few more times with the artists, I have been to Hawkwood College to document the last day two local Hip Hop artists were in their residency. I have been on video shoot sets and at DJ workshops learning the ins and outs a lot more attentively whilst also looking for shots to be printed for this module, If I saw a shot that I thought would look good such as the ones at the Honeybourne line with graffiti artists, those images took me, there was so much visual information and it was very clear in my mind as liquid light prints but also finally put into a book. I also went all the way out to Brixton at night to create some video work and take some stills to simply document the event. 

I am going to keep experimenting with the liquid light emulsion, I will explore more types of paper and ways of creating a more professional photobook using the original prints. I feel the book I made and handed in was very good and met the standards of a messy scrapbook style, which is easily seen with the fraid edges of the paper and the not to perfect alignment of paper inside the book. The stitching was just freestyle and so was the title which was written with a black pen into the tracing paper. Ultimately I feel a lot of work went into capturing and outputting the images for this module and book, I managed to realise the prints in time to a very satisfactory quality and presented them nicely. 

If I were to improve on anything it would be the creation of the book, I would have liked to have a proper hardback cloth bound book which has been a bit more attentively made than the one I did, maybe spend a good month on the design and the making of the book to refine those things that need time. 

Overall I am very happy with this work and can not wait to get it back and put it on my shelf or gift it to someone. This is my original liquid light photobook. I will definitely make another to a better quality at some point in the future, I love it. 

Peace. 
Enjoy some more new work. 

Now I have created the documents on the Cotton Rag paper, I had to sequence them into an order that I feel represents this process and the abstraction of HipHop culture consisely. I then spray mounted the documents into tracing paper so that I could stitch pages together without putting holes in the actual photographic prints. I used a white and red cotton threas that seemed thick enough to hold this book together. I created the whole thing in a few days and was thinking how to cover it quickly but so it also looks smart. So I cut two sheets of charcoal cards the same size, hole punched them on the left and binded the book to the cover. Overall I am very happy with the final outcome. It took a lot of work to create this unique book, some specialist paper and a very delicate, unreplicable process, and some dedicated time to hand make the final outcome, a book. I love the individual prints as they are and feel very proud to make them into a book. This project allowed me to create something completely new and something I had always wanted to experiment with, Liquid Light.

I looked at some negatives that I recently made towards the Hip Hop project, I found a few that I could print that would make sense with fitting in with representing the elements of this culture. During the past few months I had been attending a DJ and Break dance workshop called 'Spin the Breaks', which was funded by the Wilson museum; where DJ Fade and Bboy Victor Jay were hosting at 340 studio on the lower high street. They both explained their disciplines and how they both work together, so how the DJ's would replay the breaks in the records so the dancers could show their moves and have a jam. I captured a few frames on the night of the last workshop, the shot I got was both of them shaking hands and looking straight into the camera. I felt at the time that the shot captured the image of these two disciplines working together.

Baring in mind that the first shot that I captured towards this project was the image of Victor spinning on his back at the first workshop at the Wilson. So I have Break dance isolated as a single frame and DJ'ing meeting the dancing through learning how they work together and participating in it, following this event. I then remembered that I shot a graffiti artist one afternoon not so long ago, it was really sunny and I was experimenting with frames that day, So graffiti is Hip Hop's visual art which covers every urban environment on the planet. 
My theory behind image 2 and 3 is, with the process of liquid light in mind, I was painting the chemical onto the paper, my blank canvas, using the reflection of the red strip light on the ceiling to see where I had painted; I could see the perspective of the graffiti artist spraying the wall, his blank canvas as filling it in till he completed his design. I feel the light represents the passing of time and the area which is still blank, waiting to be filled in by each artist. 
Image 4 is a portrait of an MC, Sketchster. This night he performed with a few other local MC's, members from motion enterprise and they also had a live cypher as usual. We were out in the smoking area at the end of the night, and Sketch and a few others were posing for the camera, he was with his girlfriend and the other performers. But I remember capturing a shot which is this frame (4), where his necklace was swinging in front of the camera which had a headphones pendant, and I remember how cool this was when looking through the camera that night and my flash went off. This is a frame that represents The MC visually to me. 
Image 5, was taken during the filming of a music video. Here is Joey framed in front of the graffiti at the Honeybourne line, where a lot of my work has previously been made. We were down there with a simple LED video light set up and a Sony to capture some footage, and while the video guy was reviewing some takes and changing his settings I got a shot stood directly behind the light that was being used to light the scene. At the time I felt that I captured a good shot of him, in quite a vulnerable way, it was cold and we were quite high. 
6. Beth and her girlfriend posing int he garden for a photo. 
7. Sam (Yogi Beats) packing away his digital equipment at the end of a night.
8. A contact sheet of a group shoot That I organised earlier on in the year, this one is to show knowledge and the articulation of this culture and the people who represent it, to place them under one roof and to capture allthese creatives togther for a once in a lifetime opportunity. 

I recently came across Above Ground's work. He had previously been mentioned by many Hip Hop artists as one of the best documentary photographers involved with capturing and archiving the London's Hip Hop and Grime music culture with a close focus on the individuals who make it up. I can see straight away this guy is very attentive in his work, getting very close and personal he captures striking portraits and imagery that is full of emotion. What I really admire is the fact most of his work is taken on film, and film isn't that fast in terms of outputting it and getting it all digitised, it is probably the slowest way to shoot as I know myself, But I admire the fact this guy has so much work using this medium and from his recent exhibitions he seems to print a lot out and display them on walls as 6x4's. A true inspiration to the Hip Hop culture of photographers.   

​https://www.wycombeyouthaction.co.uk/our-services/

So I went back home and had a meeting with Kwakz Bonsu and Haseeb Nawaz who work for a private organisation called Wycombe Youth Action. They proposed a proposal to respond to, Titled 'What's Good Wycombe?' The proposal asked myself to "Highlight young people and the issues they are facing now as they navigate through life". "What is the purpose of the documentary?
Eyeopener for community and parents into the harsh reality of growing as a young person in 2019. For young people from the community to tell their story, no hold barred.
What is the intended outcome for the viewer?
To be better informed about the issues young people are facing everyday.
To ignite a want to change in those living negative lifestyles.
To be motivated to want to help themselves or help others to do better.
Develop an understanding that there is more to the scenarios than what meets the eye."

​

1st 2nd & 3rd of November I attended the Cheltenham Design Festival. There were plenty of great discussions and talkers/ representatives. I took many notes and explored the ways a designer sees the world, the structures they use to think about designing the future of products, AI, Technology, Retail, shopping and architectural design, living conditions etc etc. There was plenty of discussion independently creating your portfolio and projects, how to come about more ways of seeing and creating, through materials, software, tools etc. 
The main discussion of the event was "What is the role of a designer now?" "Think of the designer as a Conductor, in charge of the process of designing the song visually, reinventing new ways of interacting, new ways of seeing and playing with the world".

My notes went everywhere and my mindset has been reinforced after these talks, My aim as a photographer is to be represented by an agency such as Magnum Photos, to be bale to work with the best framers, book and print editors, the best researchers, and well respected artists, in a social documentary context.  

Firstly I set the enlarger up so that I knew what negatives I was going to print. I then heated up about 40ml of Black Magic emulsion and stirred it regularly in the heater. I then coated a sheet of the Cotton Rag paper with 2 coats of the emulsion to make sure there was a decent thick layer and no thin obvious brush strokes. I then used the hair dryer to dry the paper after coating. Once dry I treated the paper just like ordinary Ilford Fibre Base paper. The Eisel was set up with the correct framing, so from here I did a test.
I created one initial test print using a whole sheet of paper and a double coating of the emulsion and created my first print at 5 second intervals on high contrast (Grade 5, on the Ilford enlarger), I developed it fro about 2 minutes. Straight away I could see how using this liquid emulsion differs from ordinary pre coated ilford paper. As soon as the paper went into the dev it instantly started to reveal the exposed area, where as with ordinary paper it would take 30 seconds or so, I guess this is because there is no layers protecting the silver content in the paper, so the reaction is almost instant from the point of contact. This was interesting because it means I could be precise with developing times, maybe I could pour it on to the print to develop certain places first... Just an idea.
Anyway I printed and figured out the exposure times and the right contrast for my first print. 

Equipment List: 
Cotton Rag Paper (320gsm) 
Rollei Black Magic Photographic Emulsion
Bottle heater (to keep the emulsion at 40 degrees)
Hair Dryer
Red Light
Pain Brushes (Variety on size and thickness of bristle)
Note book and pen
Negatives
Enlarger
Paper Developer 
Paper Stop
Paper Fix
Water to wash 

Here I am measuring the paper to figure out the borders of the paper so there is even spacing around the exposed area. The paper measured at 12"x8". I was printing two images, one 35mm and one square format, so I would need to figure out the border for the square in the middle of the 12x8 sheet too. For 35mm frames I wanted an even 1 inch border which meant the final image size measured at 10"x6" and for square prints the image size would be 6"x6" in the middle of the paper.
I had to use up one piece of paper to measure the borders, this piece could not be coated in liquid light and used as a print once the writing was on it as this could cause the ink to run in the chemicals and contaminate the whole process. So this pape is just for measurements.  

There are Nine Elements to HipHop culture, these include:


HipHop is a way of living, a way of seeing and creating, for me it is the bridge between the ordinary mundane lifestyle of working a 9-5 and creating collectively, publicly and ordering the world in such a way others can see individual style in a forever growing chaotic digital environment. It is still structured in the physical world, the walls of the world are still being painted and photographs are still being made, people still rap and go to events.  

Here I am creating story boards to visualise the new imagery for "9 Elements of Culture" - Liquid Light Photographs. 
Starting with a Self Portrait. This is the first image, to acknowledge I am culture, I create it as much as the other, to look into myself I then can progress to see the world that is inside and outside of this idea. 
I intend to create 10 images that represent culture as I know it, as I see it, as I interact and evolve with. 

This is my sketchbook, in it I have noted the aims of the Establishing Practice module, my previous practice and understandings and development. 

Alternative print process. Van Dyke Solar Printing. 

Figure 2,3. Griz-o at The Shamrock pub, Cheltenham.


Here Lucas Vaughn, Prominent Grime artist from Gloucester just performed at Ryan Scott’s birthday, Scott is well known in the local scene for DJ’ing for Motion Enterprise and for networking with MC’s. This was a great night because I was in the mind set to create work, Lucas, JPDL and a few others did a set for the night and it was very professional, in fact t his was one of the best times I've heard Griz-o the sound system was perfectly clear and he just banged some new music out there, it was great. Any way when it was all finished everyone went outside for a smoke and some cold air, to where I found Griz in the corner of the smoking area with a spliff and a basket ball in his hands, I asked him where he got the basket ball and he replied ‘ It literally came from the sky, over the fence and to my feet’. So Griz got a gift from the heavens and he started showing off. Spinning it on his fingers, knuckles, and around his torso. I asked how he was so good and he stopped playing and explained that he used to go to community centres where he would play a lot and practice, So I saw a moment where Griz opened up about his past and I could see the meaning of what the moment meant, I asked to get a portrait of him holding the ball in his hands, as well as get a few shots of him playing with it. The shot that really stood out to me was figure 2, he is leant against the fence holding the ball that reads MVP (Most Valued Player) ​

Research: 
Alex Webb
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