Photographs of my surroundings

Above is a series of photographs that I took around the suburban streets where I live here in Toulouse. I took them all with a film camera "un appareil photo argentique" as opposed to "numerique" (digital) and for the first time I learnt the process of developing the film by hand myself and then procurring photos from the film, which is called "le tirage". Not an easy process when being taught in English and made even more challenging when being taught to you in French. The teacher is fairly patient, but he has had a rant about how "my generation" doesn't know how to use cameras, everything is automatic, he felt the need to teach me how to hold my camera, useful albeit a bit patronising! He is also very exacting about your techniques and the results, he said that a lot of my photos were a bit over developped or lacking in contrast, though personally I think the imperfections can be interesting beautiful even, though I will not say this to him. Also i suppose the point is learning how to develop "good photos" and then I can use that knowledge as I choose (theoretically!)

In these photos I really hoped to get a sense of the sunlight falling on the roads and buildings and the shadows created as a result. I took these photos as I wanted to reflect my daily routine here, what I see on a daily basis, on my way to the metro or the boulangerie, and how it is both quite exotic and beautiful for me and yet possibly quite banal to the local people who live here.

When not being told off for making mistakes I actually quite enjoyed the process of developing my own photos, though I think I will need to acquire a degree more patience, there is A LOT of trial and error involved! What I do miss in these photos is the colour, I had a discussion with one of the tutors here about my interest in light and how you can infact evoke light without the use of colour, yet the colours are so brilliant here, so different, browns, oranges, sandy yellows, a little more intense than the colours of home. I think this is where my painting will come in. I hope I can express the colours through my paintings, I also had a thought that it might be quite interesting to make a water colour painting from a black and white photo, as then the colour part would be primarily based on my memory and my experience of the colours here, rather than trying to translate the often slightly off colours from a photograph. I have thought a bit about painting from life, it is not something I am very used to, I think working from photos can sometimes seem safer, but perhaps it is something I will try during my time here. Particularly once it gets a bit warmer.