Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever.—Aaron Siskind
Up until November, 2021, almost every image I made were captured using mirrorless cameras and DSLRs, But since then I have been shooting film for everything but infrared and in-studio glamour photography, But I want to change that.
In a previous post, I mentioned plans to shoot Ilford’s HP5 PLUS during a model shoot with Scarlet Ana that was scheduled last month but because of unforeseen circumstances, the shoot was canceled. When the shoot is rescheduled, I want to shoot parts of each segment using my Canon AT-1 and HP5 PLUS and have it processed at The Darkroom to enable faster turnaround than has been the case with Mike’s Camera black and white film processing.
By now, regular blog readers know I have a renewed interest in shooting film and own several film cameras* including a Leica M6 TTL, Zeiss SW, Minolta Prod20, and a medium format, Seagull TLR that Mary gave me as a birthday gift many years ago. with my recent focus on film photography, I’ve managed to collect all six of the SLRs in Canon’s A-series cameras and have enjoyed shooting with each of them. And my Seagull aside, I am still looking for some kind on non-TLR, square format, medium format camera to buy. Anybody out there have something (I can afford) that’s for sale?
For me, shooting film these days is as much about having fun as it is about making photographs. And isn’t that why we got into photography in the first place? And some people think that shooting film is therapeutic. While I enjoy making images with mirrorless camera or DSLRs, there’s are several things I like about shooting film
- Surprise. In my post A Photographer’s Life in Three Phases I mention that after someone purchases their first “good” camera they discover photography’s creative potentials. During this time, novice shooters are fearless and enthusiastically explore the world around them creating images that, after examining the results, look much better than they could have imagined. You get that same excitement when shooting film.
- Travel. When I’m on the road, in addition to cameras and lenses, I bring along a laptop and an external drive to store all of the images I shoot each day. Schlepping a laptop is just one more airport hassle and while traveling I’ve spent far too many nights in hotels sorting and backing up images when I should have been out soaking up the local culture and making photographs.
- Space. In my film days everything I needed for my travel photography fit into a single Domke F-2 camera bag, which I finally purchased for my Canon AE-1 and A-1 plus accessories and lenses.
- Time. Digital imaging takes time. In the past, I’d drop film off at the lab and come back in a day or so and pick up the slides, negatives or proof sheets. If the contact sheets or prints didn’t look good, I’d yell at the lab and make them do it over. Nowadays we’re the lab and if it doesn’t look good then all I can do is yell at myself.
How I made this shot: I really like the square format. I photographed Mary with the gold-trimmed Seagull TLR she gave me as a gift. The portrait was shot on Kodak Ektar 100 color negative film using an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/11. Yes, it’s color film but I thought, what the heck, let’s make the image black and white and used Exposure Software’s Exposure to remove all that saturated color putting the emphasis on Mary and the looming photograph in the background.
If you’re wondering how much of my photography, going forward, will be shot on film, I’m wondering the same thing myself but I can tell you that will be my main emphasis for the near future—if the weather here in Colorado ever gets better. (It’s snowing as I write this.). And am I going to process the film? Maybe but maybe not. My friend Cliff Lawson is developing some of his 35mm black and white film film using a kit his son gave him as a gift and is enjoying the process. Right mow, I just shoot film and have my film scanned by the lab, staying firmly in the digital realm as far as post-production goes.
*I also own a Jaguar automobile themed Leica point-and-shoot 35mm film camera that’s crafted in British Racing Green and was purchased via a friend in the UK. But I sometimes forget that I own it, so it’s added here as a postscript. Maybe I’ll shoot a car show with it—I did!
My book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects is available from Amazon for $5.95 with used copies, as I write this, starting at around four bucks, for what is one of my personally favorite books. That’s cheaper than a Starbucks latte, so you should get one while you can.