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Why film is better than digital
Basically a “photo dump” in a video of all the stuff I’ve been making with my Nikon FE lately.
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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!
Travel Photography is Boring
008 A Double Exposure Experiment
Just a quick note before we get started: Stick around to the end of this episode for a brand new uh..unamed segment that I’m going to start doing weekly where I recommend a new something, whether be a book, movie, TV, or something else every week.
I love double exposure photography.
Why?
Double exposure often feels like a hack to create a loaded image. They live at the intersection of FORM and NARRATIVE. Mixing two images from two different moments at two different times basically automatically adds double the meaning to a photo no matter what, since photography is often just about a singular moment. But that’s a pretty clinical and oversimplified definition. The fact is, it’s harder to tell a story with a single image successfully, but a double exposure often can be a useful boost.
The double-exposure technique also is cool and leads to very unpredictable results much of the time. It’s experimental: with each image, you never really know how they will interact with each other. There’s a sort of randomness to it depending on what particular double-exposure technique you are using.
In my 2.5D printing video, I mentioned how the “heads with flowers in them” double-exposures are the lowest of the low creatively. I think those types of photos are an example of the most common usage of the double exposure technique, which feels like it’s purely about form rather than a story we are trying to tell. When an artist has a really great reason for a double-exposure, I find it super interesting.
Of course, I’m really only interested in making them “in-camera”. I like the chaos of it. Double exposures made in Photoshop seems pretty uninteresting to me as they are super clean and not recording actual moments. It’s creating meaning “after the fact” with two moments that may have no connection to each other other than looking aesthetically pleasing.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that some modern digital cameras have an in-camera double exposure feature. I’m most familiar with the Nikon one, as I’ve used Nikon my whole career until last year. Nowadays, I use the feature in my Fujifilm camera, and I kind of like it more than the Nikon feature. It’s at least easier to use. Sony, since it’s a boring PC of a camera, has no creative feature like this because it’s a boring camera made for boring people, of which I guess I’m one since I own one of them. (I’m recording this video on a Sony A7IV right now)
I have a Nikon N65 which is a film camera, but it also has an in-camera feature that feels very similar to the digital Nikon in-camera double exposure feature. Big fan of a film camera that has a double exposure feature built in, otherwise I feel like I’m breaking the camera when I have to trick the film to not advance.
In order for an in-camera double exposure to work, we have to get good at figuring out where the subjects lay in the frame and how we want them to interact with each other. Maybe the first image is your subject and the second image is your subject again but upside down. Maybe it’s your subject again but out of focus. My Fujifilm helps make it easier by showing me where things will fit, but my Nikon or Polaroid camera doesn’t have such a luxurious feature.
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Recently, however, I decided to experiment. I have a Nikon point and shoot camera called a Nikon L35AF, which is a fun and extremely frustrating camera to use. It’s astoundingly sharp for a point and shoot, and I often use it to take photos of family events and stuff. But…the battery compartment likes to bust open which keeps me from being able to hit the shutter. I have to tape it shut or else the camera just doesn’t work randomly. But…I noticed that when I finished a roll, it leaves a little tab of film out. So a few years ago, I decided to just pull that tab out and shoot over the roll again. The results were pretty cool in some cases, but there was no line between frames. It was just kind of a visual mess aside from a few lucky shots.
Not only that, but the problem with the in-camera double exposure features I’m used to is that they time-out, which means I only have a limited amount of time between images. So…I thought, what if I could shoot a double exposure in two different places?
So I had an idea that if I marked exactly where I loaded each roll of film, it would make sure the frames line up instead of just being a long negative strip with no delineation between photos. That way, I could shoot 36 or 24 shots (depending on the roll of film) in one place, then hop on a plane, reload the roll of film making sure to line it up where I marked it, and then I could shoot over it again, wherever.
I’m pretty excited how this set of photos turned out. So much so that I’m planning my next batch. To me, they tell a story about my life over the past few years. At the end of 2018, we moved from Chattanooga to basically, the woods in South Carolina. After a year, COVID happened and I entrenched myself in the small town world, stopped getting on planes and only driving around to smaller locales. My world shrank, and this year I’ve started to break out of that a little bit. We went to New York (on my first plane ride in 3 years) and I’ll be going to LA and some other places here soon as well.
Over these 3 years, I’ve changed a lot as a person and a photographer. I also realized that I got a little skittish of the outside world a bit as well. There was a safety in my smaller, quieter world, but I started 2023 realizing I needed to break myself of that feeling. New York really helped shake me out of it.
To me, these images look really awesome, but they are more than that. They are a document of a transition point. The woods that I mostly photographed are woods that I’ve spent a lot of time in during the pandemic. Despite breaking out of my tiny world I’ve been living in, I now carry around everything I learned and experienced during the Small Town Photo Project era. All that stuff has now been added to the stew of who Will Malone is.
Maybe that’s why I love Double Exposure photography so much: It’s because I see experiences as all stacked on each other. We are the combinations of our experiences and the world around us. Everything gets mushed together and forms who we are. These types of photos kind of embody that idea.
More on this series and maybe more series-es in the future! I am now just making a video/podcast every week for the Summer of ’23 around creativity and art and stuff that gets me excited. These are always kind of anchored by photography since that’s where I come from and continue to live.
But I’m adding a new segment to these where I recommend a thing- I’m gonna call it Will’s Thrills- just kidding I’m not going to call it that. Here’s what Chat GPT said I should call it:
Here are some title ideas for your podcast segment:
Will's Pick of the Week
Malone's Media Must-Haves
The Malone Method: Recommends
Will's Wonderful World of Media
Media with Malone
Malone's Must-See/Must-Read/Must-Listen
Will's Spotlight
Malone's Media Minute
The Malone Recommends Show
The Malone Manifesto: Media Edition
These are pretty bad. I think I’m just going to call it RECOMMENDATIONS.
So, in this week’s recommendations, I have 2 books for you since I was planning to start this segment last week and ran out of time.
The first book is Good to Great by Jim Collins. This is a book I read a while back and have some friends who have been talking about it recently. Decided to re-read it, and while many of the business examples about businesses like Wells Fargo and Circuit City are outdated, it’s a worthwhile book that uses to data to boil down attributes of how a company goes from middling to great, as the title states.
The next book is legendary music producer Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It’s a great examination of the creative process by someone who has worked with and observed the most creative minds in human history. Every time I cracked it open, I had to make sure I was ready to take notes, because it is packed with tons of great reminders of the trials and tribulations of a creative life.
That’s it for today. Thanks for watching and/or listening, and I’ll seeya next week.
Gear Obsession
I can’t get it out of my head. In photography, I like drama, and I like something “new” being created. Simple landscape photos are fine for a while, but they become somewhat unsatisfying after a while. Double Exposure can imbue a simple photo with something else, whether it just be interesting forms or, maybe even a story.
Double exposure for me started as a hack to take more interesting photos. Of course, my first attempts at it looked much like the Flickr or Pinterest True Detective opening credits style where flowers or trees were juxtaposed with human forms. In fact, that was my senior project in college, and at the time people thought it was pretty cool. Now, I think the senior project would be a big ole “shrug emoji”, since we’ve seen it all by now. (Not to mention the most embarrassing fact of the project being titled with a Latin word in order to make it feel more elevated. Pretty rough stuff to me now)
I’ve always loved double exposure, not because what I can do with it, but because of the possibilities of it. I like it for the things I haven’t done with it yet. It feels like a technique that is fertile for pushing of the limits- if you search “double exposure” on instagram or twitter, it’s often a bunch of that “heads and trees” stuff or people posting film shots with the caption “accidental double exposure. I think it turned out kind of cool!”
Beware My Fuji is an account on Instagram that I absolutely love: He is pushing the limits of double exposure, in-camera (which is where all the fun is at anyway) with his titular arsenal of Fujifilm cameras. He changes the colors and tones of each image as he goes as well, so that fluorescent color scheme he creates isn’t with some Youtuber’s preset packs, it’s all him on the spot. And he posts reels pretty often with how he does it too.
It forces you to think about shapes and colors and how things go together. It takes photography, which is often about recording what is there and makes it about creating an entirely new world.
Isn’t that interesting? Photographers aren’t often eager to dive into the surreal. You have to dig for them in order to find one that is really pursuing something like that. Photographers are often trying to capture light and data that’s already there and polish it up a bit.
Photographers are different than any other sort of artist in that most photographers I know are technical, almost more like engineers. Which would make sense why I’d be into something like “double exposures”, I’m dumb. Haha I’m joking, but really though, I’m not super technical. I like when there’s a little luck and happenstance involved. I don’t necessarily need to be in control of all the variables, and when I am, it ends up not being very good.
I’ve really enjoyed growing my Twitter because it’s definitely a more industry-facing audience. Instagram is a mix, but my Instagram followers aren’t super down with the nerd stuff as much as the Twitter audience. I don’t know about you, I don’t hear painters building entire followings based on brushes and canvases and paint, but photographers can talk about the tools all day.
The medium is the message with photography: maybe a photographer is taking an incredible landscape and doesn’t mention “the camera”, but it making a technically perfect image, aren’t they still? Isn’t the goal in the back of many photographers minds always to push the limits of the what the technology can do?
I used to say this as a critique of photographers, but I’m not sure love of the camera can be separated from the images itself. I think I’ve realized that it’s a feature, not a bug. If you are a photographer, you’re probably going to love the tools as well, and maybe, the tools are what got you into this whole circus in the first place.
I like “in-camera” double exposures because, well, I like being behind the camera rather than the computer. And I’ll admit that I had to make a resolution this year to not buy any more camera equipment for 2023 and just push the limits of what I have (which has very few limits these days). For all the critique I’ve done over the years of photographers being gear obsessed, I’m just as guilty. Being a photographer and being very into the gear I think is inseparable. Gear is a culture unto itself.
What I like and respect more however is when someone can get excited about gear because of what it allows them to do. Many gear review YouTubers take “sample photos” that are just unimpressive shots of their neighborhood or office, but that doesn’t really tell me anything about the gear itself. People like Beware my Fuji or Jeremy Cowart are photographers that actually push the technical limits of the gear they use- those are the photographers I’d want gear reviews from. Equipment has very few limits these days and I’d love to see how people take advantage of all the insane features we have now.
But really, if I’m being honest, I probably need to stop watching gear videos anyway.
Time Management
“If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute.” I live by this mantra. Or at least, I used to. I used to define myself as a procrastinator, but turns out, once I starting building my life around doing what I actually wanted to do, procrastination isn’t much of a factor anymore. I used to have no respect for my time, future or present, because all that mattered was how I feel in the moment.
But then, in my 20s, I started developing real goals and things I wanted to accomplish. And I realized…there’s just not enough time in the day.
The first month of 2023 has been a battle. I have been crushed under the amount of fires to put out and things to do, and yet, I managed to get them all done and then some. If I flashback to a Will of 5 or 6 years ago, all of these tasks would have destroyed me.
The reason I like 365 projects or repeatable photo projects that require discipline is that I recognize my need for structure. If left to my own devices, I’ll spend a day doing nothing as I’m excited that the world is my oyster. Suddenly it’ll be 6pm, and I will have maybe watched a movie or two. Then I realized I spent the whole day thinking about and getting pumped about all the things I could do that day.
If I don’t stay on myself, forget running my own business, I won’t function well in life in general.
I realized that in order to run any sort of business around your artistic medium in the year of our Lord 2023, time is the most important metric to measure everything. Forget money, obviously money is important to a business, but a bank account with zero dollars can be refilled again. The amount of time we spend is irreplaceable. We don’t get that back. And sure, as creative people or artists (I’m a creative person but not an artist), we need time to do nothing. I now have to schedule that time, however.
If we are expected to be these content monkeys and keep people connected to us on social media, but also, you know, get our actual jobs done, we have to optimize our time. Social media is a cheaper way to “advertise” than in the past, but now, getting information about our business out there has become a massive time suck. It can take up all our time if we let it.
So, when I started my photography business, which was originally aimed at getting wedding gigs, I learned the power of the to-do list. I used to be really bad about knowing what to do next, and the to-do list really kept my motivation fueled up. It was a hack to gamify my business in order to get it off the ground. Every day was it’s own page in my Cambridge 8.24x11 80 sheet notebook, and boy, would I fill up these pages with tasks in order to chase the high of checking them off. (It’s been about 5 years of using these notebooks for to-do lists now, so I have an absolutely absurd stack of them that might be interesting as an artifact one day. )
The To-Do List, however, is a pit. It can get pretty dangerous if we get addicted to the dopamine hit of Xing boxes in order to relieve stress. My problem back then, was that I wasn’t using my time well, which went to me filling my time pretty fast with all my tasks. A few years passed, and I realized…I’m really busy, but my paycheck hasn’t increased proportionately. Hmm.
And that’s because the To-Do List gets us addicted to busy-ness. The most American of addictions.
If we feel busy, we feel like we are accomplishing something. And while I was accomplishing a lot of things, it was largely unfocused, but it didn’t matter, because I got that hit off punching each task in the face.
I don’t want to be busy. I certainly don’t want to be too busy. But, my original twisted thought about a business was that I needed to look like I was at least doing something…lest the foreman yell at me? Wait, I’m in charge.
Fast forward a bit. I still need a to-do list to help me remember important things, however I’m able to fit TWO DAYS of tasks on to one page now. And there’s a lot of blank space in between. There was a point where I was putting “Make Coffee” or “Eat Lunch” at specific times on my list of To-Dos. I need structure, but if it gets too rigid, rigid things easily break.
To-Do list addicts exists, but we don’t talk about it. Our addiction to busy-ness is widespread, because “being busy” is a great way to avoid things and people and all the stuff we want to avoid because “busy-ness” is a classic and universal excuse. Busy-ness, however, is just running place.
I’m a guy who has found ways to monetize my love of the camera as a business, and while I have a long way to go, I think I’ve finally cracked the best way to optimize my time without getting burned out on social media or networking or whatever I have always ended up getting burnt out by. Here’s what I’m doing in 2023:
Beginning of the week, I schedule all my social media posts for the week, as well as this podcast. I get up pretty early, so this gets done before anyone else in my house wakes up. Then suddenly, other than some fun posts in the moment throughout the week, my social media is staying active. Early in the morning the rest of the days, I write these podcast episodes. Monday and Tuesday are dedicated to eliminating as much of the mundane tasks of the week as possible, like bookkeeping or data entry or whatever else.
Wednesday and Thursday, I try to book up with meetings, networking, coffees, art installations, lunch and whatever else that involves human interaction. If I have two meetings on a Wednesday, unless I’m totally buried with other stuff, I’m done for the day after the last meeting.
On Fridays, I’m braindead. Even for most of my college career I managed to somehow avoid having class or many classes on Fridays. I see it no different here. Fridays are a creative day. Brainstorming and making content and all that. The fun stuff. So, basically I make all the stuff I want to post so it’s ready to schedule by Monday.
Obviously this doesn’t work perfectly all the time, but it’s a great road map to start. I find that I have more air time in between jobs and not just filling my day with busywork to feel like I’m doing something when I’m really not. But I’m the boss so I don’t have to adhere to some arbitrary 9 to 5 schedule, despite feeling that pressure when I started out.
If you take anything away from this episode, be warned about the toxicity of a To-Do list. If you need structure to survive, a to-do list can be a useful weapon or your greatest curse.
Photography Business
Ah yes, the personal brand. We all want one, but only a select few can pull them off. The question is: Why do we want one?
The failures of personal brands are pretty simple in my mind: When it becomes too much about a person’s own fulfillment rather than bringing value to others, is when it doesn’t really work. This is 100% the problem with many photographers: many people who I’ve talked to or seen want to become a photographer are doing it for their own personal lifestyle. They see a life they want to have, and that’s why they want to be a freelance photographer or whatever, rather than what they should do which is to become a photographer because you have value to offer an audience or customer base.
If you want to be a photographer for a business, it’s no different from any other business: Do it in order to solve a problem. But, because of the culture around personal brands and photographers, that is often not the motivation to start a photography business. I’ll admit, it wasn’t mine. I wanted the lifestyle of creating because I liked how it felt, but that’s really hard to sell to people. Because it’s not for anyone but me.
Do we complain about social media engagement dropping because we are trying to solve a problem and we can’t help our audience as well, or are we complaining because we just aren’t getting that feeling of personal success and attention like we used to? Is it about us, or is it about others?
The algorithm loves educational content. Anytime I post a reel or TikTok with me talking to the camera about some tip or trick, it always does way better than posting a picture of my own art. Call it depressing, but validation of a beautiful landscape shot is for me. A useful tip being shared is for others. It’s seems pretty simple to me. I believe it’s not hard to grow a following if we are truly dedicated to providing a service or value to others. The reason we see so much complaining is just because there are a metric crap ton of people not providing anything, but want attention for it.
Photography businesses that aren’t doing well are often failing for this reason, no doubt in my mind. They aren’t serving anyone anything. Whether their audience just doesn’t exist, or they aren’t providing value. A selfish business can’t last. And, quite honestly, it shouldn’t last.
And maybe that’s harsh. But I’ve been doing this for nearly 14 years now, and I can trace back a lot of my failures to this basic problem. I succeed when I am giving people something they want, and I fail when I’m not giving them anything or I’m trying to give something they don’t really want.
Photographers are photographers. Photographers aren’t often business people. Photographers get into photography because they like photography. There’s nothing wrong with that, but our like of photography isn’t sellable on it’s own. Our passion isn’t enough to make a business profitable. In fact, and this may be a little depressing, but our passion for photography (or whatever art form) can often be an impediment to a profitable or successful business. I’m not saying it always is, but it often very much is. Artists and photographers have a couple options here: team up with someone who is really good and passionate about business, or become really passionate about business yourself.
Here’s an example of how photographers often fail: Buying photography equipment. In the modern day, it’s crazy how much you can get away with with almost no gear at all. Of course, some genres of photography require a lot of gear, but I, in all my years of this, have never required more than 2 or 3 lenses and a flash or two just in case of emergency. That’s it. You can shoot weddings, real estate, lifestyle, product, with only what’s in my Incase Sling Bag. (Which only fits two lenses other than what’s on my camera, a flash, and then some other tiny knick knacks.)
From a business perspective, a photographer should spend as little as possible on the tools themselves. Get great tools to make the job easier, but photographers often go overboard on that. From a photographer perspective, you should be buying new gear all the time. But let’s be real, unless you’re really hard on your equipment, you don’t even need to buy a new camera body any more frequently than every 5 years.
Gear is exciting. I get that. But it’s often a stumbling block to photographers because there are so many things worth investing in in business. Like outsourcing or marketing or building community with other business owners. Save your money on gear and spend it on actually growing the business, because that will help you serve those you are trying to serve more effectively.
Hobbyists make the work for themselves, Pros make it for others.