A great bag today, from just up the road from me in the UK. And this one has Marmite in it too. One of my favourite things in the whole world.
I’ve been taking photographs since I was about 13, when my Grandad gave me my first camera, a Practica LTL , heavy as a house brick and similar in shape. I used this camera religiously, all through my photography A Level, until the age of 18, when it was stolen. I replaced it with a Canon EOS 100, which I still have today. I didn’t get on with the Canon very and started to loose interest in photography until towards the end of my fine art sculptural ceramics degree in 1996. I was asked to photograph the groups work for the exhibition catalogue, I dusted down my EOS, bought some slide film and got to work. This re-stirred the latent photographer in me, and I slowly started to get back into taking my camera with me everywhere. After university I got a job as a projectionist in a cinema for a few years then as a photography technician at a college, where the photography geek in me really started to fight his way to the surface. A few years ago, I studied for a Masters Degree in photography and passed my teacher training course, and now I’m the course leader for A level photography at a large inner city college, surrounded by photography all day, every day – it’s fantastic!
I’ve never taken to digital photography, OK, I teach it as part of my job (although I still insist the students learn film and darkroom skills) and I understand that it has it’s place/purpose in photography, but I don’t actually own a digital camera, well, other than my iPhone, which I use quite a lot. If I need to do a project that would benefit from using a digital camera I borrow one from work. I do, however, have a large collection of vintage cameras, around 200 at the moment, which I’m slowly working my way through and blogging about them when time permits.
I’m also one of the founding members of Leicester Lo-Fi Photography, a community based photography group that promotes the use of all the alternative and lo-fi aspects of photography. We run workshops and courses on pinholes, solargraphs, Kamra-e-faoree workshops, film processing, darkroom skills, alternative printing methods, and so on. We also set projects for the members and produce exhibitions from their work. We have just started to apply for funding to secure premises to set up a permanent drop in darkroom and studio facilities, so that’s all pretty exciting.
So, my camera bag then, well, it always holds my Olympus Trip, a present from my girlfriend, as well as the current camera I’m blogging about, or another camera depending on what I’m doing, this can range from a Bronica ETRSi, a polaroid camera, or a home made pinhole camera, it pretty much changes week by week. I always have a good supply of film, mostly black and white, but some colour as well, just in case. The little blue guy in the middle is Cam, my ‘film god’, he’s my good luck charm when I’m out taking photos – this came about via my ceramics degree, where we would make kiln gods to sit on the top of the kiln,to look after and protect the work being fired, a tradition that goes back thousands of years to ancient China and Greece.
I think the ‘In Your Bag’ project is awesome, seeing all the different cameras people use, it’s made me aware of some of the cool cameras that are out there, ones that I want to add to my collection and try out.
Thanks for sharing your gear with us Daryl. That trip is very cool.
That’s it! cool, very cool!
Where did you get those film containers?
Hi, the film holders are Peca Products Pro 35mm film stores, I them from Amazon a few years ago, not sure if they’re still available.
I love that tape on a spool idea. I’m so going to use it. I’m going to put it in one of bellamy’s 120 film holders. And carry 4 rolls out for a day of shooting.