Film Developers & Travelling with film

Getting back from the chaos and grounding

Breathing. Just feeling the time inhale and finding what I really like to do has been blurred by reality so much that I forgot to breath and literally ate a whole packet of cadburys white fingers. In one day.

I’ve re structured the blog now and even asked ChatGPT because I couldn’t think what I wanted to do that was for me. Film, is for me. Film, is where I breathe in the air of the city or the moment of silence in nature. Everything else, is noise. So I’ve stepped back.

I got my prints back from Analogue Wonderland. After sending in a blank role of Ultramax film I had muddled up my shot rolls during transit when I came back home. That’s where it all starts and where the beginning of the end comes in.

When I got back after travelling the Summer in Asia and Bangkok, I was made homeless. Since my mother didn’t want me back. She knew I didn’t have anywhere to go and knew I didn’t have any friends.

Finding accommodation was hard as a person on benefits nobody wants to know you. A decision I made was to reapply to University in my mid thirties. Travelling was my escape. It helped heal me and gave me a wider perspective of different cultures.

They say that travellers are fuck3d up people.

Kodak Colourplus 200

Grounding and Restructure

It’s taken this long to find grounding and probably I would be on the verge of a mental break down if I didn’t have a passion in my life. Yes, writing and film seem to merge together for me. I’ve decided to restructure with this blog a site I’ve had for a long time.

I chose analogue film, because it was the most authentic version of transparency I could find that was a fine art of sorts. Back in 2016 I remember Facebook started to take ownership of photographs and I had a problem with that. If I made something, I made something and I stopped using Facebook then I needed a place to write and started looking around to make blogs. This took another five years before deciding on this. In between finding and being distracted by cryptocurrency that I later discovered is really about ownership of your digital property and copyrights of your content through giving power of wallet weight to community. Voting, plays a part in that.

For some reason my first Pride experience became Bangkok. A place that is for some reason connected to my family and where my late father built up one of his businesses. I thought I’d do my own business in crypto and try building my content there but I realise it’s not working and that’s when the stress started.

How can a country like Asia, be more accepting and changing then a western country who locks its own citizens up over professionals simply because their structures are so archaic they think the law belongs to the rich and wealthy? Yet Asia has a vast culture and deeply spiritual a place that it has become a buzzing metropolis.

I actually flew back from a week hiding out in Australia because I knew I would have had to go back home. I felt a pull. I didn’t see much if anything of Australia but it was important for me to get there because I promised myself, no matter how bad it got when I’d get back as long as I’d made it to Australia I’d forced myself to keep going because of what I believed in. People couldn’t tell me I was lazy or inexperienced. Or naīve when I had travelled and learned from others and their cultures. Being brave to fight for your truth is to stand up to tyranny. That tries to stop the tides of change by scapegoating people like me. In a way I’m. Lucky it never got like that. However it did make me feel desperate and start begging for money and support. Even though people couldn’t have helped give me a job or let me have a roof over my head showed they never had the true intentions to do so despite being my family and despite coming from a wealthy one at that. Which is why I believed in my creativity and my survival.

The strongest survive, they say.

Yet does being muscular make you a survivor when your mental can go wrong or having had illness or a disability that stops you but still your able to fight through with that inner strength they denied you of…? A degree isn’t worth anything then what is? When you’re a billionaire? What is wealth to a billionaire when they’ve reached the highest heights? Do they stop to live life?

My teacher told me on my second project, when I felt the project was sluggish I still didn’t have an idea she said ‘Forget all the other stuff, your learning’ it was in response to me not knowing how to begin to explore the project and that I wasn’t comfortable in being comfortable. Learning. Made sense no one ever said anything like that to me before. It gave me something new. Despite feeling suicidal despite still having no friends. I was LEARNING. A word I didn’t know would be a word I’d needed to hear for a long time. Since dropping out back in 2016.

The next steps

Now, I’m continuing that learning I cannot afford but have afforded the past a heavy sum of fear that has evaded my life into obscurity I need to find a way to bring it back. This roll, is that way of finding that story a home. Unique to me unique to the lens I choose to create the vision with. Like I chose to learn by unlearning an identity I thought was my family, was not my sovereign. Value.

A summary

Development Review of Analogue Wonderland

These pictures mean a lot to me. I was worried I’d get a blank film. The last time I used them Analogue Wonderland were kind to me and gave a partial refund of their development. Their service is simple to send the film in and offer a free service for collection via Royal Mail.

It usually takes a week to develop and if anything does go wrong contact you within 48 hours of receiving the film. They also have a unique software which allows you to view your scans online and is a great tool if you don’t have a digitiser at home.

Decades of Darkness

Made me realise authenticity is in the stories we tell. I don’t want to sit in that darkness anymore. We all have a life to live but being trapped and unable to find my own place, my own way, shouldn’t have come at the price it did. It took decades of many wrongs. When someone says to you, “You’re learning.” Shows the change in a persons growth isn’t an overnight thing but a journey of self discovery that has been frought with difficult circumstances that without inner healing and finding space for my own spirituality I don’t think would have made me make it. Change makes love being not enough, possible to understand that sacrifice is key to unlock the story the soul forgot to take its own way to live. Sometimes the wrong people make you feel like you can’t listen but it took the wrong people to learn to tell the right story.

This was the first ‘One roll, One story’ and the first roll of film, using colour plus from Kodak. Taken in Bangkok MBK Centre, Summer 2024.