Nancy Breslin is teaching alternative photographic processes at the Uni. Here we can follow her five week course. Week three had students working with Holgas, cyanotypes and vandyke browns.
I find January a depressing month (I hate cold weather), but it does pass quickly when I’m teaching a five week winter course.
We began the week with our first formal critique, looking at cyanotoypes and Holga contact sheets. Everyone had some success with the former. In view of the weather and the short time frame, the students were welcome to use photographs they had taken for previous classes, and the imagery was quite varied, from wild animals to flowers to portraits to landscapes to cupcakes. A bad image printed using a cool process is still a bad image, and I think they made good decisions regarding what would translate well into a hand-made blue print.
The Holga work was a challenge at this time of year, with little color and lots of gloom. Yet it was a first opportunity for most of the class to work with medium format film, and two students mentioned the advantages of needing to think carefully about each shot, since you only get twelve, which is so unlike the free endless shooting that one can do with a digital camera. Some students really took advantage of the playful nature of these cameras, using double exposures and blended images to good effect.
After week one I mentioned the visit to class by a reporter and photographer from our local paper, doing a story about winter session at my university. The article was published on Sunday at http://delonline.us/ADdqf9, and features several pictures of my class.