Prints of London. The beauty of grainy prints

Grain in a print is determined by the ISO setting and to some extent what paper I use to print it on. The London print below is what I mean. You can clearly see graininess in the sky. I took the image using a 1000ISO black and white film. I remember exactly when and where I was too. I was up at the top floor of the OXO tower having lunch with my sister. We were sitting outside watching a storm slowly gather momentum. I love the way the stormy sky looks even more dramatic with the grain. The correct exposure on the sky throws the city skyline into a slight silhouette. I was lucky on this particular day as I don’t usually take super fast film with me. You can see this print here.

Fast film can also create nice contrasts. In the print of London below the blacks are nice and dark while the highlights are slightly over-exposed. I love the way The Shard is just one big reflection. The sky looks more dramatic with very fast film and the panoramic shape helps accentuate the contrasts. I actually took this using 1000ISO colour film and so I also have a colour version of this print. It looks better in colour as very fast film alters the colours slightly as well as giving grain.

With the two London Bus prints below I’ve used movement in conjunction with with a bit of grain. The faster film has also created contrast which in this case has made the red colours ‘pop’ a bit. It’s a popular subject the London bus. A black and white background with a colour bus seems very popular but I don’t do much digital retouching in photoshop. One of the advantages of very fast film is that you can shoot ‘hand held’ where you’d normally need a tripod. You can see both of these Bus prints in the London colour prints gallery here.