film

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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The Spark You Need

The Spark You Need

Wrapping up my latest project, I thought about what kickstarted the whole thing.

It was the film. Lomography advertised a new, limited-run film stock that you had to buy in bulk – 10 boxes an order. That got my brain, and my math, going: 10 boxes of 36 exposure film equals about a year’s worth of shots, if you took one shot per day.

Boom. A project.

Sometimes we don’t need grand ideas for personal projects. Sometimes it’s the gear that sparks an idea.

Grab a cheap-o camera and see what kind of project you can make out of it. Take a simple piece of equipment – a vintage lens, or twin-lens reflex camera – and see where it leads you.

All you need is a spark.

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Lost and Found

Go Through the Changes

My Canonet is missing.

It could be stolen, or it could be lost. But it’s gone. The camera, and a roll of film with 20-ish exposures from my 365 project.

What a bummer.

That means most of September is missing. Maybe a bit of late August. Lots of sunrises and foggy mornings – those magical times when photography is so fun this time of year. The light changing, the leaves falling, the hot days and cool evenings.

It could be that I left my little rangefinder in my front seat, and then left the car unlocked overnight, a prime opportunity for a wayward thief. Or it could be that me, the absent-minded photographer, left the camera sitting somewhere out of sight, waiting to be discovered again.

The point is that I can’t leave the 365 half finished. No, I’ll load a roll of Lomo into my Olympus and keep going, and try not to pine for those lost photos from earlier this month.

Lost, or found, I have to keep going.

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Begging For Compact Cameras

Cortice

Bellamy Hunt at Japan Camera Hunter argues for a new compact film camera:

One of the large makers needs to step up to the plate and make a compact film camera. And I am not saying this on a whim or with a wistful idea of halcyon days. I get more requests for compact cameras than I could ever fulfill, even if I had the cameras. People are prepared to spend nearly $1000 for an old Contax or Ricoh, knowing full well that it could simply stop working at any point and there would be nothing they could do about it.

Hunt’s point – that the current stock of compact cameras is dwindling, and getting more expensive – tells me that there’s a market for a new film camera out there, if someone would just take a chance on making one. And with more and more companies investing in film again, photographers need new tools to take advantage of those film stocks.

Compact cameras are my favorite kind of camera, and I’m not alone. The company that stepped up and started making new film cameras again would gain more than money – they’d earn a whole bunch of goodwill.

(via On Taking Pictures)

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For My Next Project

 

Bronica ETRSi

Details are starting to come together for my next community project.

For this next one, I want to experiment with some studio space, and making the portraits on black and white film. To do that, I picked up a Bronica ETRSi from Jon Wilkening – a fantastic kit, full of potential. And it includes a learning curve, which is the part I’m most looking forward to.

(One of the benefits of picking up photography as a hobby is that you get to tinker, and learn new equipment, while you’re making photographs. That puts it in the same realm as classic computers or engine repair as much as art.)

I hope to set up a quick photo studio to practice with the Bronica, including making photos with friends and family, just for fun.

Restrictions are simply creative challenges. Using medium format film for a portrait project is a restriction that, I hope, leads to interesting results and good photographs. It forces me to learn something new, while lending a timeless feel to the whole endeavor. Should be fun.

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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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We Need A Film Camera Revival, Too

Tomyko LT002

Think about it: there used to be a photo developing station in every grocery store. You could (and in some cases, still can) pick up film in a gas station. People would print photos and bind them together into books that became family heirlooms. Then it all went away.

Now it’s all making a comeback. You can get specialty film, professional films, and boutique revival films. We shot photos at our wedding and this weekend’s move using Fuji’s Instax camera. Me? I’m trying out a pack of Lomography’s new film for an upcoming project.

But the good news is all on the film side. The other side of the equation – new film cameras – isn’t returning at the same speed as film stock. Why is that?

Leica is doing their thing, but that’s out of the reach of most photographers. Nikon has the F6, still in production, and Lomo does a good business. But from there, medium- and large-format film cameras are the only ones still in production. Where are the new 35mm cameras to meet this growing film demand? Is the demand still not at a level for camera manufacturers to supply new gear?

Not that there’s any reason to worry; there are tons of used film cameras out there waiting to be rediscovered and refurbished (it’s coming up on yard sale season, after all). For the most part, buying a decent film camera is way more affordable than buying a new digital camera.

Maybe that’s when we’ll know film is back in a big way: Pentax, Canon, Fuji, and the rest fire up their film camera production machines again.

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Analog City

Analog City

In Sound City, Dave Grohl’s love letter to the legendary, hit-making studio in California, he and other musicians gush about the “real” process of getting guys in a studio and recording music live, on two-inch tape: “the human element of creating and recording music.” ProTools has its place, many of the artists say, but there’s nothing like analog.

We’ve heard this before, of course. Everyone from filmmakers to photographers are returning to (or, in the case of movies, never leaving) film.

Lots of words get used to describe this process: magic, alchemy, mystery, human. Digital is too “easy.” You can fix everything with digital. Etc.

For many, it’s a return to what is known. Analog is more familiar to those of a certain age. A lot of what Grohl and Christopher Nolan and other film fans seem to be saying is, “You missed the good stuff, the good old days.”

Those of us who adopted photography as a hobby or profession in the digital age don’t know what a dark room is like because we’ve never used one, and may never step foot in one.

(A side note: my college newspaper had a darkroom attached to it, behind this sweet swiveling circular door, and I did spend some time in there – but never to actually develop or print images. I remember photography students spending a lot of time in that room, and I’d catch glimpses of what they were working on when they brought their prints out into the light.)

We seemed to have this big upswing, in the ’80s (music), ’90s (movies), and 2000s (photography) toward digital art making. In the last decade, that digital tide has swung back, and more and more artists are experimenting with analog again. Call it the Maker Movement, call it hipsterism, call it whatever, but vinyl records and photo film seem to be doing okay again. Not great, but not dead.

So it is with blogging – away from federated, silo’d social media platforms and toward artists and writers owning their material.

Maybe we’re all learning that perfect isn’t the goal. The goal is to make something great, imperfections and all. Something human.

We’re all living in Analog City now.

 

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365 Prints by Jon Wilkening

By Jon Wilkening

Remember what I said about investing in the art you enjoy?

Photographer Jon Wilkening is doing a 365 day project, where he offers up a print each day – and it costs whatever order it’s in. I got day number eight, so I paid $8. Day number 365 will be $365, etc.

Jon’s work is very cool. He does pinhole street photography, with interesting motion and abstract blurs. I waited for the right combination of light and colors for my print, and day eight has this lovely primary color scheme going on.

Order one of Jon’s prints – they’re great.

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Local Film, Local Photography

Support your local film photography vendor

Friday, during my lunchtime walk, I discovered a new camera store here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I walked in, and it had the usual suspects of a camera shop: new tripods, fancy bags and straps, a bunch of new Fuji and Nikon and Canon cameras sitting on shelves. And, a wall full of film.

Joy!

Because there are fewer and fewer places selling honest to goodness film these days, trying to snag a roll was random and difficult. If I didn’t want Kodak instant cameras or Fuji Superia, I was stuck using Amazon or B&H – especially for my favorites, Agfa Vista and Ilford HP5.

But CameraMall had those and more. Medium format film! Kodak Ektar! Weird Ilford film I had never heard of! My beloved Agfa! It was like a candy store. As a bonus, they also develop 35mm film.

It felt really, really good to plunk down the $10 for two rolls of film, knowing that I had a local place to shop from. They benefit (yay, camera stores!), I benefit, and somewhere down the line the photography industry benefits.

And really, the film costs the same in store as it does online, I get to geek out with the guy behind the counter, and it’s an excuse to get out of the office and go for a walk.

Find your local place, if you have one, and shop from their film selection (or memory cards, or tripods, or whatever). Order some prints. Check out their used gear section. I know ordering online is super handy, but the benefits of shopping local are numerous.

I’ll bet that after you do, like me, you’ll feel better about doing it.

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Film Photography Collection

Film Photography Collection

It seems I’ve become the “Dave Will Take Your Old Film Camera” guy.

To be fair, I did pick up the Canonet at a yard sale. The film, too (all of it expired), was a flea market grab.

I’s been a fun way to stretch the photography hobby into new areas. Yes, it’s expensive, and yes, there’s a learning curve. But what else do you do with a hobby but spend money and pick up new skills?

Missing from this photo: a Yashica Mat 124 TLR camera a friend from high school gave me. My first foray into medium format.

Stay tuned.

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Bringing Back the Bohm

Proud to present my debut as a documentary film maker with Bringing Back the Bohm, the story of a dedicated group of community leaders coming together to restore a closed and dilapidated theater in Albion, Michigan.

Last fall, through my job at Albion College, I had a chance to photograph students learning about the theater’s restoration process. Elizabeth Schulteiss, the executive director of the Albion Community Foundation and lead cheerleader of the Bohm project, and I talked about how several documentary offers had fallen through.

Having done video work for the college, I volunteered to complete a short documentary for the theater in time for their grand opening on December 27, 2014 – the 85th anniversary of the theater’s opening in 1929.

The project was well outside my comfort zone. A five minute video I can do, but a half hour video?

Luckily I had lots of help from the Friends of the Bohm committee, my co-worker (and producer!) Erica, and the resources at the college.

The documentary debuted at the grand opening, after a rushed few weeks to get all the interviews and editing done.

I’ll say this: it’s a heckuva thing to see something you made on a real big screen. The film has its quirks, and I see lots of stuff I’d like to make better. But the point is, it’s done and out in the world for lots of people to see.

Learn more about this great historical community theater, and catch a movie there. You can order a copy of the documentary on DVD by contacting the theater, too.

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