I had to take all of my kit with me, so I decided to borrow my Dad’s huge camera bag. It’s got room for 1 camera, 5 lenses and a laptop, which is great, but it can get soooooo heavy! As I walked up the extremely steep hill towards the hall, I felt like I was on a bootcamp outing! You know when you see a fat person on a weight loss TV show being given a really heavy rucksack to carry up a hill? That was me. But I didn’t do too badly and only stopped a couple of times to catch my breath

It was also one of those annoying days where it rains a little bit, then it clears up, then rains again. It wasn’t heavy rain, just that shitty thin rain that gets your camera damp. We took cover in the beautifully restored Grade II* Listed Camellia House for a while and I got some nice shots of some roses with my macro (see above.) I can’t wait until it’s really warm weather and I can go inside really early in the morning and just chill out. I don’t remember the last time the Camellia House was open. I think it suffered terrible vandalism at one point and they had to close it. I’m so glad it’s open again.

After that we went for a brew and then went for a quick snoop round the hall. I was going to take James on the guided tour, but it would have been £10 for the two of us and we couldn’t afford it. I’ve been before, but I would have liked James to see it.

I’m back at college on Tuesday and I haven’t done any homework yet. We didn’t go last week ’cause it was half term, so I should have taken loads of photos by now, but I haven’t. I’ve decided to focus on my Great Great Grandfather for my next project, so I need to dig out a load of stuff relating to him and set it all up nicely and neatly on the table. I think I’m supposed to take bits into college as well so I can photograph them under the studio lights, but I’m worried they will get damaged. If I don’t take anything in though, I’ll just spend 3 hours doing sod all and that’s sooooooooooo boring!

I’m meeting up with James again tomorrow morning to take some shots in town. I hope it doesn’t rain and I hope he’ll give me back my fisheye lens. I leant it to him ’cause he wanted to photograph an ice hockey match, but I’ve been worrying about it all afternoon. I think maybe I shouldn’t lend things like that to people. It’s not that I don’t trust them, I just spend the whole time worrying about the item I’ve leant and it’s not worth the hassle! Hehe!

The first one is a Kodak Retinette 1B (pictured above.) It takes 35mm film, which suprised me, but at least I can still buy it and get it developed on the high street. The camera is in very good condition and looks fantastic. It came with a nice leather case too.

The second camera is a Kodak Brownie Reflex 20 (pictured above.) I decided to buy this because it looks so retro and it’s a reflex camera which I haven’t got. It also takes 620 roll film, which I’ve never used before. Apparently you can’t buy it anymore, but I’ve found a bloke who’s selling it online and he’ll develop it too, so it’s worth a try!

I plan to use the reflex camera to take street photography. I’m hoping that because I won’t be holding the camera up to my face, I’ll be able to take photos of people without them realising. I also hope that my photos come out looking really old and grainy! Don’t get me wrong, I love digital, but it can get a bit boring, so going back to film for a while is my way of making photography a bit more exciting.

And finally, I have just finished a 36 exposure film on my Dad’s Pentax K1000! Yay! Unfortunately the mirror has started locking up on it, so I won’t be using it again until it’s been fixed, but I got a few nice shots out of it. You can see them on my Flickr page.

The next film to get processed is the Kodak Retinette 1B film. I can’t wait to see how they come out. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to have quite a few out of focus shots, but maybe they’ll look arty! LOL! As soon as I’ve got the photos back, I’ll post some on here. Until then, I shall carry on snapping!

When I first started the course, I made a note of everyone who was using Nikon and everyone who was using Canon. To my delight, it was approx. 6 Nikons to 4 Canons. And also to my delight, no-one had come with a more professional camera than me.

About half of the class had just come straight from a beginner’s course and one or two had taught themselves, so it’s a good mix of people.

In the course requirements list, it said you needed to have a basic understanding of photography and Photoshop and most people had the photogaphy covered, but not the Photoshop. This annoyed me quite a bit because it meant the tutor spent a whole hour and a half going over the basics, when we should have been focusing on taking photos. Hopefully that will be the first and last Photoshop lesson!

For the first course project, we had to focus on the home. I really struggled in the beginning because I just didn’t know what to photograph. Home to me is being locked away from the outside world and that’s not really something you can photograph. My favourite place is my bedroom, but I didn’t want to show that to the people in the class. If I let them into my bedroom, even just through photography, it wouldn’t be my own private world anymore.

In the end, I just spent a whole day setting up various ‘homely’ objects on white lining paper and tried to make them look presentable. You can see most of them on my Flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickyw_uk

I have handed in my ‘Home Is’ project to be marked and I really hope the tutor likes it. Being the perfectionist that I am, I want him to think the photos are awesome and obviously I want to pass the project with a distinction. If I don’t get a distinction, I shall feel a bit like a failure.