Drag Kings of Derby

Phew, I'm tired. I got back from the anglo-half of last week's Hindu wedding at 2.30am last night. It wasn't so much that the wedding went on for a long time, but travelling back from Preston was an absolute mission. Fortunately, I wasn't driving, so I had a little nap on the way back. Think I might have drooled. Not hot. Anyway, moving swiftly on. Last weekend was Derby Goes pink, so naturally the Drag Kings were out in full force. Here are a couple of pictures of us enjoying what ended up being a large number of beverages. Monday was not a fun day for me. After Alice and Emma stood up to talk about the Drag King Project, we went to Curzons to watch some Drag Queens perform (with a slight detour over the road from The Duke to this interesting digger, which everyone except myself decided to climb. Not because I'm judgy and sensible, more because I'm so clumsy that not falling over is a genuine challenge sober, never mind climbing something not intended to be climbed, after strangely coloured shots.) There was also a male stripper, who got rather creative with baby oil, shaving cream and a Union Jack. I'm not entirely sure that dear old Elizabeth would have entirely approved.

She was really saucy.

Not a lot of shaving foam in evidence there to conceal his modesty.

Check out the back muscles! This chap was B.U.F.F. His name's Angel and I got his email afterwards to send him the pictures. If you want, I can totally hook you up. He was very approachable. And to be fair to him, it was a really well thought out routine. He got the ladies involved too. Probably because the men were going INSANE for him and he couldn't have used the 'embarrassed audience pariticpation' skit effectively.

Whoops, somebody lost a wig!

Emma and Robyn getting up to mischief half way up a JCB.

This Drag Queen was my fave. She cleaned up all the shaving foam and oil with a towel after the stripper left the stage and was fussing and tutting and saying 'Oooh I don't know. These bloody men, can't clean up after themselves. I should know, I used to be a prostitute! They're all messy buggars.'

These two are of Gael, aka Ryan Troy getting her 'tache on. Moustaches are applied by the dab handed Alice.

darkrooms and the depths of despair...

Tommorow is my final day of darkroom printing for my black and white photography module at NTU. It's an important day. Last Tuesday I arrived at 10am and left at 8.30pm (with a somewhat over-extended break for lunch with my interesting friend Adamski). Even with the break, you still go a little bit bonkers when you're confined to a small space with dim red light and the constant sound of running water for many, many hours, especially when you know up top it's super sunny (a rarity in England!) and everyone is eating ice cream and drinking beer in the park. Having said that, I still only managed to get three decent prints out of last Tuesday and I need six for my final submission, so think of me tomorrow, squirrelled away in the bowels of the Bonnington building, singing made up songs and generally reminding the rest of my class the reasons behind why they all think I'm a little bit strange.

It is immensley fun though, playing in the darkroom. There's something incredibly satisfying about setting up your englarger, organising your negatives, making your test strips, sloshing them about in developer, then stop, then fixer. Then washing and drying, squinting at your print in the fluorescent lights outside the darkroom like a mole. At the end of the process, you feel so very attached to the little prints, that you cherish each one like a child. I love every imperfection, the curled up edges once it's dry, an accidental slice of black border creeping in the shot, a squiggly white line of dust from the neg. You end up giving a deep sigh and thinking, ah well, here we go again then. I'm very new to it all. We've been darkroom developing for 11 weeks. In the cheesy yet immortal words of Princess Jasmine and Aladdin, it's a whole new world.

The course is new too; we are the Professional Certificate in Photography guinea pigs. Because it's a part time night class, there's a wide variation in fellow students. At 25, I'm the youngest and one of only two girls. I would honestly say I'm the least experienced too. I had virtually no understanding of film photography, I cut my teeth on digital, with a Canon EOS 400D, which was given to me as a Christmas present in 2006. Now I have a 10D, which I use for weddings and things. I love my 10D. I love my newest purchase even more, the Canon Speedlite 580ex. It's a sexy, sexy flash. I find the best results for people shots is to strap on an Omnibounce, twist it up but facing backwards one notch, and whack the camera on Auto. Honestly, it sounds like cheating, but you get amazing results.

But anyway, we're getting very off-topic. The pictures I'm developing were taken with a Mamiya RZ-67. I don't need to say anything else other than that. The camera is quite simply, exquisite. I can only apologise for the inexperience of the photographer. I'm a little unhappy with how the shadows worked out. I set up two spotlights pointing in the centre of the studio wall, to try and create a circular backdrop behind the models, then used an overhead softbox to light the foreground. But it's created distracting double shadows, which I've had to dodge out when printing. I decided to print on Ilford Multigrade IV Fibre Based Matt, which I think lends the pictures a depth and softness which almost makes them look like 1920's Hollywood stars. That sounds hugely pretentious. But it does! In comparison to resin coated papers, it's a world apart. I tried a couple of shots with Lomo fibre based matt paper, but you just couldn't retain the sharpness in the detail. I suppose that's why Ilford are so popular...they're amazing! The models are a group of girls I know; I went to school with Alice, the Sailor, and now I'm friends with all the others too! We're collaborating on a really interesting project in Derby, which will hopefully extend further afield in time, looking at gender and the reactions people have to androgyny or mixed gender signifiers; we're exploring the idea of female masculinity. The models are primarily lesbians who dress in drag, not half heartedly either. They glue on beards and go out in public, and I follow them and take pictures. If you're interested, click here. Or just keep coming back, because despite the fact that my module's almost finished, my interest and work with the Drag Kings of Derby is ongoing...

p.s. I apologise for the quality of the scans. I haven't quite got the hold of it yet. For some reason the up close one has come out on an angle and the full body picture is blurred around the face and hand...