In photography what is ‘grain’? And what is generated by the way a negative film is processed? Grain is produced by the silver crystals inherent in a film’s emulsion. Below is a link with a fine and knowledgeable explanation. 

https://www.richardphotolab.com/blog/post/film-grain-and-pixelation

I love grain and here below are examples of my own work. 
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In the images below there is a different result. What happened here is that I used ID11 film developer that was out of date. By a few years too. A huge demijohn of the stuff. Pure experimentation. The result I called ‘Battered and Torn Apart’. It literally destroyed the imagery. On the plus side is an interesting ambience. Ethereal. 
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In the future I also envisage using:

1. Out of date film. The silver on the emulsion being unstable. I call it ‘FOOD FILM’ Film Out Of Date For Imagined Latent Mayhem’. 

2. Film that was in date when used but are still in the metal 35mm canister that the film sits inside when inside the camera. Taken over a decade plus ago, the inherent silent and latent imagery awaiting to be acted upon with developer. 

3. Also experimenting with natural products to develop the negatives. Coffee, washing soda and Vitamin C powder mix. 

Problem presently is finding time in amongst turmoil of other stuff! So much going on betwixt own interests and helping others too. For examples. My wife’s change to new shop premises to paint and then set up, helping a friend move house, decorating a fair few rooms in our house, planned family visits to us and preparing for said visits, ourselves visiting others afar, holiday breaks, shopping weekly town visits, currently decorating living room, etc. Busy old life. Busy being old in life and achieving at half the pace!

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Hopefully getting some photography done will be sooner than later. For example. After going out and shooting photograph images with rolls of ‘in date’ black and white films, I took them out of the camera and chucked them in a box. They have sat around ever since. Actually taken from about a decade plus plus ago. A number of reasons stopped me giving them attention. Nurse training was too full on. The metal sink that I used for developing film and washing the photograph prints in developed a massive rusted hole around the plug hole. Became unusable. I had a little dark room ‘out back’ which became a miserable, damp affair. So it got ignored basically. 

Talking of what takes up time in retirement. That damp back room place.

Side theme.

Interestingly. A dehumidifier, especially the modern ones, is an absolute joy for a long room where the back painted slate wall holds back the whole garden. Damp was a constant enemy in the ‘long room’ with two little additional rooms which became the small pottery and the small darkroom. It was a constant battle with dark mould collection on the walls. Now. The whole place is sorted. Mold killing considerations were thrown at the walls to get them clean and safe. After being painted a year and a half ago, they have stayed as dry as a bone. The long room was essentially a back alley to the house. We had a sturdy polycarbonate roof put on between the house and back slate garden wall. Now it is a very useable space. A boiler sits there too. But there are no plans to re-introduce a darkroom or pottery. They are more useful as housing tools now. 
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