I always like to have some kind of project on the go, and when I don't, it feels weird and I become a bit lost and bored. I enjoy to make things, mostly from wood.
I love your general outdoorsy stuff such as hiking, mountains/forest's etc etc. I've always been into photography, ever since I got my first camera (Kodak M863) as an early teenager. Since then, I take a camera everywhere with me either film or digital.
On a trip away with some friends, I found an old 'Kodak Six-20 Brownie' film camera in an antique shop. I bought it as a souvenir to sit on a shelf, but after looking at it everyday, I started to wonder if it worked and if I could actually use it.
I researched about it, and it turned out that it used 620 film, which they no longer make. You could however modify the spool on 120 film. This then got me looking into 120 film (medium format) and I loved the images. I saved up and decided to buy a medium format camera from eBay - a fully manual and very loved/used Mamiya C330f.
I was amazed with the images I could get from it, but I wanted to start push/pulling the film so that I wasn't constrained by the box speed. The developing shop that I used didn't push/pull, and so I decided to teach myself how to develop it.
I started off with black and white first, and then I moved onto colour.
At the beginning, I used to get the shop to develop the negatives only, and I'd scan them myself using a bit of metal I cut out to hold the film flat, a cardboard box and an iPad as a backlight. I then then took a picture of it on RAW with my DSLR. It worked - very well to be honest, but after a while I decided to come up with a better way. I got a friend with a 3D printer to print me a film holder that allowed my to feed the film through in one continuous role. It make the process to scan so much quicker. I then bought a light table from amazon to use as both a back light and a way of seeing all my negatives at once.
All my film images are scanned this way, and I'm very happy with the results, so I've never bothered looking at paying many many £££ for a proper scanner.
Since then, I now also shoot 35mm, due to film costs rising so much.
Also, after going on trips in my mates campervans, and always bunking in with one of them, I decided to save up and take the plunge to buy myself a van too. I bought a British Gas LWB Caddy, took all the racking out and turned it into a campervan. I've done and built everything myself, and built it to actually last and use, rather than to try and make a quick profit.
I decided to log a build diary for everything I've done on it, such as a fitting a diesel heater, installing windows, making a pullout kitchen etc.
Some of the places I've travelled in it, when I remember to update it, such as the NC500 and Cornwall can be found here
So yea, that's about it.
