Adam French - Photographer
The main reasons I photograph is that I love to experiment with the chemical side of creating a photograph, there is magic in seeing physical photographs appear in front of you under red light.
I mainly am a portrait photographer, focusing on trying to get the essence of someone to be portrayed through a lens.
I've been shooting film since around 2009 with my first film camera of a Lomo Diana and then onto a beaten up Canon EOS 1000fn. Since then my cameras have been getting progressively more and more random and old. Most the time I now shoot on a range of large formats ranging from the 1890-1900s in Full Plate [6.5x8.5in - It's called John V2.0] to around the 50s with a 4x5 focal plane shuttered MPP Micropress and random barrel lenses, like the ridiculous 'Crazy Russian Lens, KO140M, a 140mm f1.8; in large format terms this is a 37mm f0.5 so it inhales light. I'm always on the look out for different and strange lenses to adapt to cameras.
I have rebuilt an early 1900s half plate Soho Kershaw reflex to take 5x7 film and a 1914 quarter plate Thornton Pickard Ruby Reflex to take 5x4 film too, so if you see a guy with ridiculously large cameras and an afro, that's probably me.
I love experimenting with random mediums and modifying or building cameras, that's why I use a lot of the large format gear, there is a lot more modular parts of bigger cameras, means I can shoot various Polaroid mediums as well as sheet films and glass negatives. My first and second 8x10 camera was built by myself out of the theatre staging in college, with a homemade lens made of a Pentax 24mm and some Sigma elements from a second lens. Saying that, I also use quite a few different formats when I'm not lugging around heavy gear. Super8, especially Kodachrome K40, 35mm [Pentax K1000, Olympus XA] 6x6, 6x7 [Pentax 6x7 TTL], 6x9 [Plaubel Makina II], 9x12 [Voigtlander Avus]
As long as there's silver halides, I'll try to shoot with it somehow.
Education
2016 - 2019
Leeds Arts University, 1st Class Honours in Photography
2015 - 2016
Kendal College of Art and Design, UAL Foundation Diploma. Distinction
Credits
2019
2019
BBC - Hidden History: The Lost Portraits of Bradford
Historical Camera Consultant and Technician
Exhibitions
Group
2019
LAU, Push and Pull
2019
LAU, Amalgamate
2017
Sunny Bank Mills, Ones to Watch 2017