Rachel Brown Workshop

Rachel is an English self-taught photographer from Huddersfield. She has experience working within professional environments for magazine companies such as Harper’s Bazar and Town and Country magazine, working as a photo director. On top of this Brown lectures at local institutions wanting to help the next generation of creatives.

Her personal work has taken her on numerous adventures from America to Sicily undertaking residencies. I was in awe of her technical process whilst undertaking her Palm Beach, Florida residency as she wondered the streets at night in an unfamiliar location, carrying a medium format camera and tripod, whilst a serial killer was on the loose. Mentally, I would not be able to do that, or I would be too focussed on my surroundings that the images would not be the best quality. I love the vibrant cinematic feel of her work and how the images look so eerily quiet almost like you can sense her fear.

Using the Intrepid 4x5 mark 4 wide angel large format camera and 90mm lens, we experimented with dark room developing. Aiming to produce a minimum of 2 photos (1 portrait and 1 incorporating an object) that are clearly focussed and developed properly. I enjoyed the process of developing images in the darkroom but found it difficult to focus the camera with such as hallow depth of field. It also felt really weird to not be able to check my images straight away, it made the process a lot more valuable and time consuming. Rachel mentioned that this form of printing is called a calotype which helped her fall in love with photography again, finding it fun and freeing in lockdown isolation. Due to the time and expense of the calotype method I realised how lucky we are to have digital technology that allows us to check images immediately because I personally think it is a bit risky to not preview the possible outcome.

Check Rachels website below...

https://www.rachel-brown.com/about