Friday, December 18, 2009

Through the rest of my life, do you wait for me there?

This project has totally consumed my brain and my time for the past week...Struggling with some decisions now though. When I started, everything was already pretty much decided - the negatives had already been developed so all I could control was the scanning and processing, and I had no plans or expectations so I guess I was just winging it, and trying to be as faithful as possible to the negative/scan, dust, streaks, and all. Now though, I have four rolls of black and white film that need to be developed and I'd really like that to happen soon....

Originally I was going to develop them myself once I got the equipment and chemistry, but now I'm not so sure. I have all the equipment and could probably get chemistry pretty easily (I have some but most of it is expired), but right now the idea of setting up a space just for these four rolls seems a little excessive and overwhelming. Plus I had planned to use Diafine to develop the film (which somehow works very well with high contrast/over-exposed film, which is common when shooting with a Holga) but I really like the results I've gotten with the film I shot with a Holga and developed in D-76. It's nice to have the highlight details though, and I like the color film converted to black and white, which was slower film and thus has a much greater range of values.

So I'm torn. Part of me thinks I should developed the film in Diafine, so I have the detail if I want it and just do a little more work in Photoshop, but the other part of me really likes to stay true to the negative as much as possible and so I don't want to manipulate the images any more than necessary. Plus it will probably be fast at this point to have someone else develop the film and I really want to keep the momentum going.

Decisions, decisions...


Color film converted to black and white.


Black and white developed in D-76 (I think - I'm pretty sure I only used Diafine on one roll and it wasn't a roll from the island. Can't be sure though, it was a few years ago. One more reason to start keeping notes!)

Monday, December 14, 2009

Will the summer make...

I've spent the past three days mostly working on old film shot with a Holga...It took all of Saturday morning just to scan the negatives in. To be honest I had no idea what to expect - I don't have a film scanner, I'm just using a regular flatbed. I knew the images weren't going to be the highest quality, at the time I was just more interested in seeing what I had shot, since most of this film is from a few years ago.

Well somehow these photos have just totally consumed me. I'm not sure exactly why I'm so obsessed, but I've been doing almost nothing else but working on these photos. I'm getting stuck with the color negatives but every attempt gets a little better.

There's a few things I can think of that really draw me to this work - I've been thinking a lot about layers and taking pictures through windows, screens, etc. Also, as always, interested in ideas about looking back, nostalgia, juxtapostion of old and new. I don't know, I feel like there's a lot of thinking to do about these images, and they need more work but I was just so excited about them...Guess I rushed through them a bit.









Friday, December 11, 2009

Some old polaroids

So I've been distracting myself with movie/TV watching and sorting through/getting rid of a bunch of stuff (selling a bunch of craft stuff on Craigslist, Facebook note about it here) but I'm trying to get back on track...Brought in nine rolls of film to be developed yesterday, four rolls of expired 120 color slide film shot with a Holga, which are being cross-processed, and five rolls of black and white. I really want to continue shooting with the Holga, but I'm going to run out of film soon! If anyone knows of anyone looking to get rid of some 120 film, let me know!

While we wait for film to be developed, here are some old polaroids I finally scanned.







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Wednesday, December 9, 2009

And yonder, wild and blue, the wild blue yonder looms...

Getting back into shooting - mostly shooting film, and most of that with a Holga. I'm really eager to develop that film, but I don't have my own processing set up and I want to develop the Holga stuff with Diafine, so it will have to wait until I can get some chemistry and a developing tank, etc. I guess I could get the rest of the film developed somewhere - it just seems strange to get black and white film developed by someone else when it's so simple to do myself, and I feel like I have more control. Plus if anything goes wrong I only have myself to blame.

Anyway, here are a few images from last Thursday - Think there were some 50 knot gusts that day!









The usual color vs. black and white dilemma...I think that's part of the reason I started shooting film again, so I wouldn't even have to make that decision! Though I've been shooting some color film too, but that's more because I'm interested to see what happens with the color film in the Holga, especially since most of the film is expired. Some of it is slide film too - trying to decide if I want to have it cross-processed or not. Do places still develop slide films? Without having to mail it somewhere? It might be a total failure either way, since the film is so old, and shoot in a Holga...

Also, something I hadn't thought about until a friend asked - If you shoot a roll of film, and then it expires, will the results be different than if a roll of film expires and then you shoot with it? I know that film generally tends to lose sensitivity over time, so I'd assume if the film expired after shooting, you'd still have properly exposed images. Thoughts?