35mm film

Film February

Film, it seems, is all the rage again.

It’s the ultimate anti-AI photography platform: analog, messy, imperfect. As digital photography gets better and better, some of us want to slow down and embrace the physical.

My own film journey is…nothing noteworthy. I have a few film cameras, a bag full of various films in my freezer, and every once in a while, I’ll pick up my Canon AE-1 or Olympus Trip and snap a photo around the house, when the light is just right. 

I recently sent off a few roles to The Darkroom to get developed. When they came back, the photos were…all right. A little messy and imperfect. The funny thing was, it was like traveling back in time.

“When did I take that?” I ask myself. I even forget which film it was. 

This month, I’m diving into my film archive and sharing some select pictures on Instagram and Flickr. 

For me, film photography is the ultimate experiment. The top of the I-don’t-care mountain. Whatever comes, comes.

Enough time passes between developed rolls that the years don’t matter. The subject doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

Just the image, the light, and the moment captured.

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Old Stuff Revisited

Here’s a harsh truth: I’ve taken fewer photos each passing year since 2015.

It’s not for lack of trying or interest. No, it’s mostly because the rest of life got busier – three kids, a demanding job, a new house, chores, spending time with family, etc. 

(Another consequence of moving home and work is that I don’t have an interesting commute anymore. It’s mostly city and highway driving instead of the beautiful back country roads that used to fuel my hobby.)

That means, besides family vacations and a rare sunbeam coming into the home office, I have fewer and fewer photos to take, edit, and post for public consumption. And I miss doing that! I miss the process of capturing pictures and making them my own.

Lately, my solution has been to go back and rediscover some of my past work. I can look at it with fresh eyes, and tinker a bit. I have a good selection of photos that I’ve taken but never touched or shared in the years since.

Take my film portraits from the Musicians In Jackson project. I was initially so dissatisfied with how they turned out that I shelved them in favor of the digital versions. Now, looking back at them, they were actually pretty fun, and using a bit of Lightroom magic, I can make them look how I prefer.

There’s a ton of abandoned pictures and others that are stuck in a Lightroom folder somewhere. All I have to do is look for them, play with the sliders, and boom – something to share.

Now, that also means I’ll eventually run out. And I can’t fix the not-enough-time-for-picture-making problem – not easily. But this scratches the creative itch well enough to keep me busy for a while.

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One Afternoon, One Roll of Film

Time to break out the Canonet.

After thinking about my favorite type of camera – small, single lens, 35-45mm range – I loaded a roll of Agfa Vista 400 and hit the streets for a just-starting-to-feel-like-spring afternoon in Ann Arbor.

From loading to dropping film off at the camera store took less than an hour. I had 24-ish chances to capture something walking around an unfamiliar neighborhood. And I had 40mm to express what I saw, with a rangefinder focusing mechanism to express it.

I also had a serious limitation: the bright, sunny afternoon was killer when the Canonet’s highest shutter speed was 1/500. That, combined with a 400 ISO film speed, meant having to pull the ISO down a bit, or else the camera refused to take a photo. Chalk it up to one big learning experience.

The point is, I took the Canonet for a spin, and blew through a 24 exposure roll of film. That old saying about potato chips, that you can’t eat just one? Same rule applied to that roll of Agfa Vista. It was easy to just keep visually snacking.

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Kodak Gold 200 Expired Film

Some fun, very colorful Kodak Gold 200 expired film shots from last summer and this summer.

Love that pink tone. I have a few rolls of this stuff left, and a few Kodak Max 400 expired rolls, too.

Amazing what you can find at a yard sale.

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Photographer Profile: Matt Lockwood

Who are you, where are you, and what do you do?

I’m Matt Lockwood and I currently live in a small town in the northeast corner of Indiana. I’m a business professional with a very enjoyable career in the data and content analysis field.

How did you get started in photography?

I started gaining a strong interest in photography after I graduated from college in 2012 (Oakland University, Go Golden Grizzlies!) with a BA in Cinema Studies. A lot of my inspiration comes from some of my favorite directors such as Ingmar Bergman, John Ford, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, Andrei Tarkovsky, Carl Th. Dreyer, Charlie Chaplin, and Federico Fellini.

Some films that have inspired me include Seventh Seal, Onibaba, 8 ½, Ivan’s Childhood, Night of the Hunter, and Vampyr.

What do you like about your photography?

What I love most about my work is the many ways to explore natural lighting, composition, exposure, and different types of film stock. I’m currently a huge fan of Ilford Delta 400 and Ilford HP5 Plus 400.

You do great black and white work, and that translates well to your film work. Where do you get inspiration for your style/ideas?

The themes I like to explore in my work include realism, neo-realism, and avant-garde expressionism.

Any upcoming projects or shoots you’re working on?

I plan on starting a portrait project. There isn’t really a theme for it, but more of an exploration of different individual expressions and moods.

Check out more of Matt’s photos at his Flickr gallery.

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