JOANNA
BROWN

27th June 2019

It is 5.12 and I am woken by the summer rain thrashing against the window and my  son ‘Fox’ wakes like clockwork at this time every morning. Everyday I head downstairs to make him breakfast, brew a strong black coffee and creep back to bed to write in my journal.  Since studying for my degree I have always maintained the discipline of using some kind of journal, sketchpad, notebook, scraps of paper, and even written notes in books when i have no paper to hand.  Today photography and my business exists purely in the digital landscape; images live in clouds, folders on a desktop, hard drives ladened with photos, pintrest boards and various platforms of social media .  I studied and learnt the art of physical Photography; loading film, winding on, developing film, and creating beautiful prints all by hand.  One of the reasons I continue to shoot film in a number of different formats both at Weddings and personally as first and foremost I have a real physical connection to the craft.  I defiantly have one foot in the physical and one in the digital and more and more spend more time in the virtual space just because of the nature of running a business.  I have in the past blogged and whilst building this new site I lost my blog which i had been using for the past 9 years!  I see this as an opportunity to create something a little bit different in this new space.  The style of this will be more like a diary/sketchbook where I share work, ideas, inspiration and hopefully shape it in more of a personal meaningful way than just becoming formulaic and a SEO driven space.  There will be weddings of course as that is what I shoot mainly, but also the other things which feed into how and why I shoot the way I am and also a bit more about me as a person.  

Here are some film images that I shot with my Diana Camera recently.  It was late spring and mother nature was waking up from her slumber.  One Sunday afternoon we adventured out to deepest darkest West Sussex to a beautiful gardens called Leonards Lee.  I can honestly say it felt like we were in Alice’s wonderland; miles and miles of paths weaving up and down revealing colours and shapes like I had never seen before.  Shots of bright colours were abundant each and everywhere I looked.  I wanted to create dreamlike images, using multiple exposures to create a riot of colour and form.  The light was bright enough but not overly, I could still get enough detail and texture that I wanted…. Shooting on film is purely process driven,  starting with choosing what camera and film stock and then the art of inhabiting the ‘decisive moment’ and finally the wait of the film being processed and until they appear in the world as physical prints.  I was over joyed when I got the film back, the colours are so vibrant, the landscape unrecognisable from the everyday, the essence of the place singing so clearly…. I chose the right camera, the right film and painted with them that day.  If you are interested in a print of any of these please send me mail at info@joannabrownphotography.com.


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