Series: Fridays in Film Photography | Vancouver Wedding & Boudoir Photography | Film Photography in New York City
I was recently reminded of something I just never thought would be a thing again: film.
Some background:
Like many of you who took classes in Photography, I started by shooting film on fully manual, heavy and clunky-as-hell metal cameras with, you know it, a fixed 50mm lens. Pentax K-1000 anyone? I still have a Pentax K-1000 sitting next to me on my shelf along with about 6 other vintage film cameras and a whole whack of lenses, most of which my boyfriend has hunted down when we visit thrift stores. There are a few nice bodies, including a Yashica Electro-35, which might be my favourite of them all. There's also the K-1000 - but that's just there as a reminder of my roots ;)
The issue I have with the vintage bodies we own is how practical they are - that is to say, not very, for most of the work I'm doing. I love movement with my subjects and sometimes I just find the manual focus lenses impractical for this reason. And with film, the decisive moment is just a totally different beast than with digital.
Recently, however, I had this reminder from some friends who shoot only using film, that film can actually be practical. Why? Because I could use a newer SLR Canon film body, with my current kit - all of my autofocus, EF mounts lenses (my babies), and all of my Canon EX flashes. Why I didn't put two and two together before, I'm not sure? I'm all about ease of use. If I find it a pain to use, then I won't use it. That's not to say I'm not interested in problem solving (my friends can attest to this), but it's got to be practical and efficient if I'm going to add it into my workflow.
This has led me to start the film series, and every Friday I'll be posting about something film-related. In a future post I will talk about the film body that I recently bought, but this Friday I wanted to start with some older work.
I have a massive backlog of images that I have never posted anywhere. In fact, I don't post most of my work at all. In an effort to overcome this shyness, I'm starting with the oldest stuff I have, and that's film. About 5 years ago, I travelled to New York and Montreal, shot a bunch of film, developed all the rolls, and never printed and barely looked at any of it. Shame! So the past week I have been scanning in these rolls of film using a dedicated photo scanner, and was pleasantly surprised by both the results and the reminder. What is it about film that is so special? In one of my first digital photography classes, we were asked to distinguish between printed film images, and printed digitals. It was hard to tell the difference at that time, and there are so many variables to consider.
Don't get me wrong - I love digital photography and it has revolutionized the genre completely (that could even be an understatement!) I'm definitely not shaming digital! I do however hope to share with others some of the joys of film and why/what makes film so different.
In the meantime, please enjoy some photos from the backlog! These ones in particular are a selection from New York City. We walked around Manhattan all day! Who doesn't adore New York? I've been a handful of times and can't get enough.
