John Hinde

John Wilfrid Hinde (1916-1998) was an English photographer whose idealistic and nostalgic style influenced the art of postcard photography and was widely known for his meticulously planned shoots.

Born in Somerset, England, his interest in colour photography arose during the 1940s. From the later half of the 1940s to the middle half of the 1950s, he entered the circus life, where he met his future wife. However, he soon returned to photography and, in 1956, he left the circus and founded John Hinde Ltd. in Dublin to produce and distribute his colour pictures of Ireland. Hinde's most famous work is that of the Butlin's Holiday Camps, in which he portrayed a welcoming and jubilant environment. In 1972, he sold his company in order to pursue his love of painting. The Irish Museum of Modern Art recognized his work with a retrospective in Dublin in 1993. In 1998, Hinde died in Dordogne, France. At the time of his death, millions of his postcards had been sold worldwide. It is the aesthetic look that Hinde achieved that i really want to try and replicate in the postcards i make.

Roll that went wrong

I was using one of Martins various cameras for my third roll of film but the back came off in my bag and exposed the whole film in the camera. There was only a couple of photos that were even close to coming out but they were very very dark and totally green. I wish this had been a bit more in focus so that the text on the sign was clearer.

2nd roll of film xpro

Shot on the same camera and film as my first roll. Somehow and I'm not sure how this film came out totally different, instead of the greenish hue its now red. I went to an abandoned house that is currently or used to be a squat. The only thing i can think that affected the colour of the film is that it was alot brighter and sunnier when i shot off this film than the first one.

1st roll of film xpro cont

This first film came out very green and i think this works very well with the photographs of the horse with the construction in the background. The two other images that i really liked are the charity shop with the lettering that has fallen off and the front garden with various balls in.

1st roll of film xpro

Shot using a camera from college on fuji velvia 100 film, xpro.

Xpro

http://flickr.com/groups/crossprocessing/pool/
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/xpro/interesting/

I started to look into Xpro more and naturally started my search on flickr. Above are some examples that show the range of different results you can achieve. Cross processing is the procedure of deliberately processing photographic film in a chemical solution intended for a different type of film. The effect was discovered independently by many different photographers often by mistake in the days of C-22 and E-4 . It has been used a lot for fashion advertising and band photography in more recent years it has become more synonymous with the Lomography movement.

Stuff I have been looking at for the collections brief

These postcards are from my Dad's random collection of postcards that crucially all had to feature a pier and they and are the starting point for my collections project.
The aspect of the postcards that really interest me are the colours and high saturation, which after a bit of research i found out are down to the film and the complex tri-colour carbro process. My idea was that i wanted to create a book of postcards that could be ripped out and used or they could be kept as a book.

My housemate also gave me a book by Martin Parr to look at called 'Boring Postcards'.




After looking through this book i thought i wanted to create a collection of boring postcards of leeds from photographs that i took myself. However i gave this a bit of thought and the appeal started to wear off. I think it would have been too hard to pull this idea off because the postcards in the Martin Parr book are funny because when they were created they were meant to be serious and i think this would be lost if i tried to make them funny from the beginning.

I then started to focus on how i was going to get the aesthetic look i wanted that looked as close to the 1960s/1970s seaside postcards as possible. I thought the easiest way to do this would have been to take the photos digitally and then manipulate them in photoshop. It was only after the first crit and speaking to Martin that the possibility of doing it using film came about. Martin suggested that i use colour slide film and then get it cross processes. Xpro results in unnatural and highly saturated colours, which are both at the core of what i was trying to achieve. Using film also feels more authentic and the sense of unpredictability you get when using both film and the xpro process really appeals to me.

Finally getting back to blogging

I've realised that i haven't done anything to my blog since finishing the first year a sorry state of affairs.