Thanks for watching!
How big can you print a 35mm negative?
I was curious about this because I like printing my images huge and I’ve never really tried to push a 35mm negative to see how it would do. Watch the video for the results!
Shooting Day and Night in One Photo on 35mm Film (Cinestill 800T)
This was a super interesting experiment! I decided to mix up this multi-location Double Exposure series I’ve been working on by shooting 2 exposures at different times of day AND different locations. Overall, I liked most of the results.
The frequency of the videos will increase as I get a handle on this workflow. Thanks for watching!
The Quest
I listen to a lot of podcasts.
Like, seriously, a lot of podcasts.
I go through phases, I like current events and news, comedy, podcasts about movies, every once in a while, I listen to a photography podcast.
But I don’t really listen to a ton of photography podcasts, because it’s kind of tough to listen to “photography” stuff, and not only that, but there just aren’t a ton of them. But one genre of photography podcast I love is about film photography.
Film photography is so podcast-able because there’s so much more to talk about than digital photography. Digital photography gear is so… “same-y”. You either are into what the latest camera or the 2 or 3 year older model. And there’s only like 4 brands: either Canon, Sony, Fujifilm, or Nikon (yes, Nikon still exists. Maybe I’ll do an episode about my Nikon love soon)
But with film, you’ve got such a variety of things to talk about that could make any photographer drool: You’ve got a plethora of camera options and formats (medium format, large format, panoramic, square, 35 mm and so on), but you also have film “stocks” aka the film itself.
Most importantly though, you have the “quest”.
“The Quest” is dying in the modern age. “The Quest” was a pretty common experience with most things at one point- I think about movies. If you wanted a copy of a cult classic film, you couldn’t just rent it on Amazon or iTunes, you had to go on a hunt for a physical copy. That was the fun of buying things a couple decades ago, your want of a thing was bolstered by “the quest” for the thing.
Digital photography has none of that. It’s too new. It’s everywhere. Not only is digital photography gear not that interesting or rare, you can get whatever you need over a quick google search.
But film photography stuff is all discontinued. New film is being made, but it’s often made in batches and runs, so if you can get Lomo Purple film today, you made not be able to get it tomorrow. That Contax T2 point and shoot camera was decently affordable, but then Kendall Jenner started using one and the prices skyrocketed because…Contax doesn’t exist anymore, so there’s just a limited amount of these working cameras on earth.
Film photography is subject to basic economics in a way digital photography is not. (Well, unless you’re looking for a Fujifilm X100V right now)
Anyway, speaking of having what no one else has: I was listening to an old episode of The Analog Talk podcast where they were talking with Joe Greer.
Joe Greer is really interesting because he got started in photography BECAUSE OF instagram. He would travel the PNW (that’s what the cool kids call the Pacific Northwest) and take pics with his iPhone 4. And that was back before anyone knew what an algorithm was.
In this episode, he was talking about how he’s evolved a bit from landscapes to street photography. He had a really interesting observation: There’s no way anyone can recreate your street photography photos.
It sounds obvious, but as someone who shoots a lot of landscapes and architectural images these days for The Small Town Photo Project, I get what he’s saying.
Just this week in fact, I stumbled across a Facebook page that posted an image of an old building I found via my drone (of a small town) that I could have sworn was mine. The only difference was the color. Then I realized: they probably just found the same place I did, and took it from a similar angle. Did they copy my shot? Maybe. But it doesn’t really matter does it? That shot is able to easily be recreated either on purpose OR on complete accident.
I love those videos on TikTok where someone shows their beautiful images of a landmark like horseshoe bend or the Arches in Utah, then it cuts to a video clip of them standing next to 100 people shooting the same image. Landscape photography is quickly becoming “public domain” in a sense, and the only way to stand out is to just go to places that most people won’t. But then once you do it, they probably will start going there too.
Value in photography is getting harder to find. It requires getting more and more specialized and focused on one little corner of the world. Whether it’s small towns, or you shoot client work with only film. Or, even better, you are one of the lucky ones with a super unique style.
I’m not saying street photography is the answer: I’ve never been super interested in street photography for a long stretch because I feel like the images end up being so different, and in being so different, they sort of feel the same, you know what I mean? Only every once in a while do you see a really stand out street photography image.
Personally, that “quest” for your voice or a style is the most interesting part of photography. If you spend years and years chipping away to find who you are as a photographer, you’ll try out a lot of different things, and eventually all those things will add up together into you.
The popularity of film photography in the modern day is predicated on the gear, the film, the quest, and the process. The images are almost a by-product of the real joy of shooting film over digital.
Digital has so much power and infinite potential, so the sky is the limit. There’s no limit to the gear availability or editing tools. So, in digital photography, “The Quest” has to be “The Quest for Your Voice”.
Look through your social media, who do you follow? What styles of photography are you hitting “like” on the most? Sometimes we have a voice already, and we just don’t realize it.
Like I said in the intro episode: finding our value in photography takes a hard look at ourselves. And not just once either, but regularly.
Photography has gone mainstream...again.
I was jarred awake by my 4:55 am alarm.
I slowly and groggily got up with a moan and a sigh, but I was also full of the same excitement and hope I am for every day I get to wake up again. That’s not a joke either, we all have our depressed seasons, and I’ve certainly had mine, but mostly, I’m pretty excited about waking up every day despite the mornings being cold and my bed being warm.
I shuffled to the kitchen. Coffee Time. Writer of the show Billions and host of The Moment podcast Brian Koppleman calls the first cup of coffee of the day “The Royale”. (Not to be confused with a French Quarter Pounder at McDonalds). It’s that first creative jolt I get from The Royale that fuels most of these podcasts.
I’ve used a Chemex to make coffee for about 9 years now. Pour over coffee takes time, but I think there’s enough scientific evidence of the benefits of a handcrafted cup of coffee at this point. I once read a Yelp review that someone wrote about an Italian restaurant in a small town: It was a lament. The writer wasn’t angry about the formerly frozen Fizzoli’s-esque Italian meal he had at this restaurant, but rather, he used his short blurb to mourn for the people in the small town, that this was all they knew. He wept for them. That’s how I feel about people who still drink instant coffee in a Bunn coffee maker.
It’s a bad habit, but I always hit the phone in between pours. Gotta check out what happened past 9 PM last night. So I pulled out my phone to check out my daily Google alerts that I have set for all the things I’m interested in.
Suddenly, the earth began to quake.
In the first episode of this podcast, I talked about how I had a weird feeling about the state of photography. It just feels like the end of an era of some kind. Like flood gates are opening, destroying everything we knew and replacing it with…something else.
Two big things happened in the world of photography last week. The first was an NBC story that covered film photographers, interviewing Jason Kummerfelt aka grainydays on YouTube. Oh, the video was shot entirely on film too, by the way.
The video felt weirdly ancient, and not because they shot it on film. It was in that completely unappealing cable news style where you get no real depth into a subject, but you still walk away feeling like you can tell everyone you’re an expert now. Every grandparent you know is about to tell their grandchildren that some mysterious group of young people named “They” is back at it, and this time, “they” have all switched to shooting film instead of digital now, can you believe that?
Despite the weird out of touch nature of it, it was pretty cool to see film photography of all things be featured on national news. I’m not sure I remember a time where digital photography has been featured on the news other than maybe when a new iPhone comes out or when a wedding photographer gets mad at a rude couple and deletes their photos in front of them at the wedding. Granted, the already insane price of film is about to get more insane since they just aimed an even bigger spotlight on the growing demand, but anyone who buys film has already sold their first born into indentured servitude by now already.
The second thing I saw on my phone which added to my shock: Leica, the company known for those super expensive cameras you want, decided to re-release the Leica M6 camera AKA everyone’s favorite 35mm camera.
In one week, film photography was brought to the mainstream.
It was already creeping up, but I didn’t think that suddenly it would happen like this, like, within two days of each other.
Film photography has been living on this weird edge for a while, where it was even on the fringes of photography. Now, a big camera company is releasing a new $5,000 film camera, and an analog photography YouTuber was interviewed on your grandparents TV. Weird times, man.
This is a cool development though I think because it broadens the definition of photography, which has been a weird focus of mine lately.
What I mean is that, “photography” and the “photography industry” doesn’t really exist. Photography is so big at this point, and there are so many different facets of it.
This is a tease for an upcoming episode, but the industry is so siloed that there really aren’t “famous photographers” like there used to be. Photographers are pretty much only famous in their own universes nowadays- just try to ask your dad to name famous photographers he knows. How many of them are still alive?
Any time I tell people I’m a photographer, I always get asked, “Oh, so you shoot weddings?” And then I have to do all this work to explain, “No, I’m not that kind of photographer….”
That makes sense, because most people only interact with a photographer for family events, so the label “photographer” has been co-opted by that one particular lane of photography.
But now, because of NBC, those people will ask “Oh, you’re a photographer? Like you walk around neighborhoods in LA and shoot 35mm film with your Leica M6? What’s your favorite stock these days? I hear those Portra prices are nuts right now.”
What’s awesome about the 2022 world is that we have all the tools of the past as well as the present. There are no rules or limits on what we can do. Just take a lot of the movies and TV to come out in the past couple years for instance: Mank, The French Dispatch, Blonde, and Better Call Saul. All either have black and white elements or are completely in black and white. Better Call Saul especially was a spin-off of one of the biggest shows in the world, Breaking Bad, and it, for story reasons, had the final 4 or 5 episodes in black and white. It’s not just “indy” stuff that’s doing it. In the past, maybe black and white was the only option, now, if your story needs to be black and white, then why not?
Photography is the same in that we now supposedly have a growing film industry. That means, that film is here to stay for at least another generation, so there’s no rule that just because it’s modern day that we only have to use digital for everything. If your goal is to create successful images, good news! You have another photographic tool in your arsenal.
I’m seeing a lot more “hybrid shooters” these days. Digital photography is just easier, quicker, and cheaper, especially in a pinch. But when you have a moment to spare, I think the look of film is worth the time it takes. And whether people realize it or not, I think the look of film is what everyone wants anyway (or else VSCO wouldn’t exist).
And you may have one of those fancy coffee makers that you set up the night before that has a timer so you wake up to the smell of an ok cup of coffee in the morning, while I prefer to wake up and make a cup of coffee by hand. Both ways are right.
Well…my way is probably a little more right than yours.