Film Roll: The Beginning

I’ve often receive flack over the years for not knowing much about film and considering myself a photographer. Truly, I could care less about what people think and always thought “why would I shoot film when it’s so much of a hassle?”  Well, as time went on I’ve become more of a commercial shooter which has led to me not having much of a drive to shoot for fun when I’m “off” work. I started shooting heavily with the iPhone and I love it! The one thing I don’t love though, is it’s too easy. There are no settings, you’re just composing. Now sometimes, that’s all I want to do but recently I’ve had the itch to shoot some more “walk around” stuff and not have the same workflow I deal with day to day. I want to slow down a bit and not take so many damn images. I found film.

So far, I love it. It’s easy to shoot, there are only 36 shots per roll and I rarely take two shots of anything. This is a big change from comparing 22 images which all look the same but trying to decide which has the least amount of wrinkles. I’m having fun again. I also love the fact that your subjects can’t see the back of the camera and complain about their lazy eye or need to lose weight. In fact, I may start telling clients my LCD is broken… Shooting film forces me to really see what’s in my frame. Are my lines straight? Do they need to be? Hows the light look? Where’s it coming from? What is my meter reading? What am I exposing here?

I’m not really concerned with the “proper” development at this time since it’s just a fun hobby so I’ve been developing at Costco or Kenmore Camera. However, I did buy a true black and white roll of 3200 and shot it at 1600 so I’ll be heading to Moon Photo to get that roll taken care of.

I’ve been trying to decide how to share these images and still haven’t figured out a perfect answer. I started a Tumblr which is really cool but the downfall of that is I have to create a whole new following. I was thinking of keeping my film work separate from my business but now I’m thinking I shall just post my images in the blog as they turn up. I’d really love feedback here from you guys. Is 25 or so images too much to share on my blog in one post? I’m thinking about doing “Film Fridays” and posting my film shots then. Thoughts? I’d truly love to know what you think. Thanks for any feedback and enjoy!

TIP: Click on the first image and then just use your left/right arrow keys to scroll through the rest. 

• Tweet