I have moved

It's finally happened. I  have moved house.

You can go check out my website at bernardbrand.com

I'll leave the old blog up as an archive of things passed.

Thanks for all the support

Film

Over the last year I've acquired a few film cameras. I'm not quite sure how this little infatuation with film started.

I remember buying a little Olympus Trip in 2011 (I think), just for some random film snaps and it quickly escalated in me looking around for 2nd hand Nikon's. I now have 3 Nikon's. The FM2, F3 and F4s. They're awesome!

I guess another reason I wanted to get into film is to slow myself down a bit and think a little more carefully when shooting. Is my focus correct, exposure, framing. All the factors that make a good photo, coz I only have 24 or 36 exposures, so if I f**k this up it's one less shot I have in the bag.

I'm still a long ways away from being any good at film photography, but I do believe it's helped with my digital photography.

Anyway, here are some shots from sometime last year.

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Olympus Trip; Shot on Fujifilm Superia

Olympus Trip; Shot on Fujifilm Superia

Olympus Trip; Shot on Fujifilm Superia

Nikon F3; Shot on Fujifilm Superia

Andre & Melanie Wedding: Evergreen Bushbuck Ridge Game Lodge

I had the privilege of capturing my cousins wedding this past weekend.

I was really nervous going into it, but at the end of the day I'm super happy I got to photograph it and I am happy with the results. It was nuts doing it alone, but luckily I had my other cousin (thanks so much Ivan) to play "VALS" or "voice activated light stand" for those of you that don't know.

Here's a quick sneak peek for everyone that's interested. I'll post the rest soon as I'm done :)

Thanks Andre and Melanie for letting me capture your wedding.

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Lady Gaga

Whilst most people were cooing over "Lady Gaga" a few weekends ago a small group of people were gathered in the dirty streets in the center of Joburg to watch 3 live electronic acts (The Watermark High, Vampire9000 and A Skyline On Fire) do their thing in a small independant cinema called Bioscope.

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Vampire9000

Vampire9000

More 3rd Place faces

Some more photos from my little project to document all the faces of our little community church.

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60 Minutes With God (Part 3)

Here's the final post of my personal project.
I hope you've enjoyed looking at these images and again if there are any questions please don't hesitate to contact me.

I'm super stoked that every exposure I made came out (even the accidental ones). I'm really excited to explore film photography a whole lot more

Here are part one and two if you haven't seen them yet.

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60 Minutes With God (Part 2)

Part two of my personal film project I did in August this year. If you want to know anything about it don't hesitate to ask.

Check out part one, here.

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60 Minutes With God (Part 1)

Some of you may recall that I went "offline" for the month of August to focus on a personal project. This was to be a photographic film project. There was research that was supposed to go into it before starting it; seeing as film is a different beast than digital.

I needed to learn about reciprocity failure and the intricacies of long exposures on film, as every film has it's own characteristics. Needless to say that didn't happen. I was going into this project blind with no idea of the outcome and I was excited (and scared as hell).

So for everyday of August I was going to take a few minutes of my day (between one and four minutes) to just become quiet amongst all the noise and reflect and pray/meditate on the day passed, hence the title "60 Minutes With God".

On a side note: At one point I wanted to do hour long exposures, (and call it 30 hours with God) but with limited time - and me not knowing how the film I was using would react - I decided against it.

In no way is it exactly 60 minutes; it may be a few minutes more or less. I am not sure. I didn't time myself, cause I did not want unnecessary distractions so my phone wasn't with me.
I also limited my range to about a 5 kilometer radius from my house as I didn't want to drive for hours after work. I took the photos about 10 - 15 minutes after sunset. A few of them were before sunrise, but when the sun started coming out earlier and me having to wake up earlier each time I gave up on that.

I made a photo everyday at different locations or different spots in the same locations for 31 days and it felt good. Really good. I want to do this everyday. Make photos!  Doing this project just re-affirmed it for me. I'll continue until I get there (and then carry on) or until I die which ever comes first.

I've been kind of hesitant in posting it. Firstly because the quality of the scans are only 72 DPI, but for web that is fine and secondly because of "subject matter". I feel comfortable enough to do it though and if you get it awesome, if not; that's awesome too. The photos are the original scans with VERY little color adjustments done, just to fix some of the exposures. They're not perfect; some compositions are shitty (if not all), the focusing is sometimes shit (but that adds to it for me) and I can go on, but I did this for myself and if someone finds enjoyment in looking at these photos then I'll be happy.

That's the story behind the project and I'll be doing it in three parts, cause posting 31 photos in one go might be an overload. :)

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