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Thirsty Thursday: Throwback Film Love

Rambler: Beth
Drink at Hand: No. 209 Gin + tonic 

Well, its been awhile since we got our ducks in a row to post on a Thursday. Don't really have a good excuse other than that we've been busy. Nothing big, just lots of little stuff that take away from spending time with the photography blog. So, here we go, with a little throwback because, well, Thursdays. 

Between 2003 and 2007, we were lucky enough to live in Japan. Besides being just a beautiful country with amazing culture and melt-in-your-mouth fresh tuna sushi, its a country that takes its photography very seriously. Back in 2006 when these photos were taken, digital was quickly gaining momentum, but I believed that film was the purest form of photography. I had a Canon 20D, but I loved film. Terry had already embraced digital and was running amok and producing some great imagery with his Rebel, but I still loved my Canon Elan 7e. And when I really wanted to immerse myself in a creative shooting project, I'd take an old fully manual Nikon loaned to me from Terry's mom to get my film fix. Sure I had to wait a week to see the results, but I didn't mind. 

Part of my film love might have been the camera stores in Tokyo. There was one not far away in Tachikawa. They had long refrigerated cases of film, not unlike the dairy aisle in an American grocery store. Kodak, Fuji, Ilford, Agfa, 35mm, 120, negative, slide...it was all there. The Air Force base where we were stationed had a dark room, so I could even play around with my own black and white processing. 

When we left Japan, I no longer had a dark room or massive camera stores with huge film selections. I was busy with grad school, and I upgraded to a Canon 40D as shooting digital was just easier and far more affordable. Without access to a place to browse and buy film, and without a lot of time to shoot creatively, the film cameras sat idle in the camera cabinet. That idleness continued until a little over a year ago when our house was burglarized and both of my film cameras were stolen (and ironically the digital cameras were left untouched). Now I have no film camera and I miss having that option. 

So tonight, a few frames from a ski trip to Zao in Japan. The snow in Japan gets a lot of hype, and I can say that the powdery goodness is definitely worth the hype. The Zao snow monsters are unique, and as you can see I had a little obsession with trees at the time. Especially frosty trees. Sometimes I look back and cringe at my photographic technique (and am happy with the way I have evolved and progressed as a photographer), but I still love how pure these frames captured on film turned out. 

Might have to find myself another film body soon. But in the meantime, I have plenty of digital work to keep me busy! 

Thirsty Thursday: Analog

Rambler: Terry
Drink in Hand: 2009 Paraiso Zinfandel Irie

It's been a long week since last Thursday. In fact, the days have blended together and I find myself wondering how it can be another Thursday already. Last weekend I had hoped to go through some of my Germany / Italy pictures, but it's amazing how fast plans change. These are the shots that I was able to edit throughout blur of last week. Unlike most of my edits (which are almost completely done in Apple Aperture), I discovered that my Nik Software Aperture plugins were automatically updated by Google. I'm still not thrilled that Google felt that it could update software on my computer without my knowledge (not even a notification). However, I have fallen in love with Nik Analog Efex Pro. I'm actually quite surprised that I enjoy these type of finishes so much. Many moons ago when I started to get serious about photography, I found myself waiting for the digital era. I didn't want a film camera. I didn't want a Holga. I suppose I was just naïve. I just wanted a DSLR. I didn't want to deal with developing film. I wanted sharp and crisp images with vivid colors. I wasn't a big fan of black and white photography. I didn't like the imperfect artifacts of film. But that's something's changed lately. I simply love it. There's something about the imperfections and the textures that I love. In fact, some of the images weren't perfect to start with. . . a bit blurry or maybe a poor composition. All of these images were taken with my Canon 5DMKII and processed through the Nik Analog Efex Pro plugin for Aperture. This set is a mixture of images from both Germany and Italy. I hope you enjoy them and all their imperfections. They seem a bit more real to me.

Massey Monday: Navigator

There's something about this dog and a car ride. She loves a long road trip just the same as a 5-minute ride to the market. And she watches the road like its her job the whole time.

This image was made with my old Canon Elan 7E and Kodak Tri-X 400 film. Same round of film shooting as detailed in this Thirsty Thursday post a few weeks ago.

Thirsty Thursday: Mystery Rolls

Rambler: Beth Drink at Hand: Naked Grape Pinot Noir (yeah, I bought it because of the name...don't judge me!)

Something a little different this Thursday...not so much about a cool place to go shoot, but rather about an attempt at shooting some film! About a month ago I walked into the local camera shop with 3 rolls of exposed Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white film in my hands. I bought this film when we lived in Japan...yep, that's right, purchased 2006 most likely. It was well past the expiration date! I found one roll already exposed when I was organizing some camera stuff when we moved into the new house. The other two rolls I took recently. Actually, that's not even true...I found my film camera with a 1/2 exposed roll in it. So I had a roll and a half of mystery images (I had no idea what that old stuff might be) and a roll and a half that I had shot within the last few weeks. I waited the requisite week to get the processed film back from the lab and then had to wait a few more days for Terry to scan the film with our Nikon CoolScan film scanner before I actually got to see what I had.

It turns out that the old "mystery roll" was pretty old...from 2008! That also means it was exposed, tossed in a box, moved Lousyana, endured the heat of that place, moved back here to California, and finally shown some chemical bath love. Back in '08 a friend was considering buying a digital camera, so I loaned him my digital camera when he went out to shoot with us at Point Pinos one evening, and I shot film with an old Nikon full manual camera. Here are a few from that evening.

I played around with the blur tool in Aperture and made this one look a little bit like a tilt shift. Best I can do since Terry won't let me get an actual tilt-shift lens.

A few months later we went to Yosemite. I guess I took the camera with me to finish that roll from the summer evening at the beach. I don't even remember having it with me. But of course I took a Tunnel View photo in black and white--because no one has ever done that before!

Fast forward to 2011...I decided to try a roll in my Canon Elan 7E on our way north along the coast to Pescadero. I used the Photodiox adapter with the Nikon 50mm manual lens. It was pouring down rain, but I couldn't let this bike go without a quick photo. Terry kept making fun of me because I kept looking at the back of the camera after snapping the shutter--but there's no instant feedback in the form of a LCD screen on the back of a film camera.

To finish off that roll I took the camera along on a quick hike with the dog in Ft Ord and shot a few here at home.

With all the bike riding / racing I'm doing these days, its not easy to get away to shoot for a whole day, much less an entire weekend. But changing up the routine in familiar locations proved fun. I got something different than my normal images and that makes me happy.

Get out and try something new or different this weekend. You might be surprised by the results!