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!