The Film: Wrapping Up
The final take-away from my experience of shooting 35mm film over the last year is that it’s largely about the process for me, less about the look. I like working with it. I like the tangibility of it. I like that you can make a picture without turning on a computer. I like waiting for it and how it forgives. I like the cameras that go along with it.
Yeah, I like digital photography too—especially the control, but I’m not crazy about the cameras or (for the most part) the processes associated with it. I’d even say they have become a kind of barrier to my enjoyment of photography up to now. Odd that it took shooting 130 rolls of Tri-X for me to fully realize that (but it did).
Some day, probably when I don’t write code for a living anymore, I could feel very differently about all this. My relationship with technology will have changed and maybe then, digital process will be something I can enjoy more and dread less. I’m also optimistic that, as the field matures and we’ve finally had our fill of megapixels, low noise, and features galore, we’ll see some radically new types of digital cameras appear—machines that are as simple, elegant, and enjoyable to use as our grandparent’s cameras could be. My iPhone is proof that it can be done.
Until that day, I’ll continue to shoot film.
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This is the last in a series of posts I’ve been writing on using film during the Leica Year project.
The Film: Vantage Point
John Szarkowski wrote in his book, The Photographer’s Eye, about “Vantage Point” and the role it plays in photographs. By approaching a subject from above or below, by standing too close or too far away, we can gain insight. His words:
“If the photographer could not move his subject, he could move his camera. To see the subject clearly—often to see it at all—he had to abandon a normal vantage point, and shoot his picture from above, or below, or from too close, or too far away, or from the back side, inverting the order of things’ importance, or with the nominal subject of his picture half hidden.
From his photographs, he learned that the appearance of the world was richer and less simple than his mind would have guessed.
He discovered that his pictures could reveal not only the clarity but the obscurity of things, and that these mysterious and evasive images could also, in their own terms, seem ordered and meaningful.”
I feel exactly this way about photographing in black and white. For me, monochrome photography is another vantage point—while color is the “normal” one. And like climbing a tall building or laying on your belly to get a fresh perspective, its power to reveal can be… well… pretty astonishing.
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This is another in a series of posts I’ve been writing on using film during the Leica Year project. One more left to wrap up and then I’ll move on to The Lens and The Camera. And that’ll be that. Thanks, as always, for hanging with me.
The Film: Workflow
I make my income sitting at a computer and I think I do entirely too much living in front of them. Between my laptop at home, my computers at work, and the iPhone I carry with me everywhere, I’m pretty much always connected. I’m strongly ambivalent about this but I’m not anti-technology. I’ve worked in the tech industry for 16 years and I appreciate its value and believe in its promise. I see glimpses of our future all the time and they usually excite me*.
Somewhere along the way though, I reached a tipping point and ever since I’ve felt a strong desire to back away from it all, to get some distance. This has become a dance where technology and I separate for a time, only to be reunited when the music requires it—not unlike one of those elaborate country waltzes in a Jane Austen story.
This project has changed the music for me though. Between blogging and my film workflow, that dance has turned into a kind of tango where the heat from my partner’s body is always felt and their hand continually within reach. Blogging (at the moment anyway) is worth it. Film, I’m less sure about. Is all that scanning to enable a digital workflow worth the cost? I’m undecided.
I saw a pretty good documentary on Robert Frank last night called An American Journey: In Robert Frank’s Footsteps. There was a point in it where photographer Wayne Miller—a contemporary—talked about his memories of hanging out with Frank at the time he was working on The Americans. Miller mentioned that Frank would edit from his negatives, not prints. He’d hold them up to the light, cut out the frames he was interested in with a pair of scissors and toss the rest.
That kind of blew my mind a little.
If I could do that confidently, then… well, using film would be so much easier. I wouldn’t have to scan every frame, just the few I thought worthy of a second look. I could do the bulk of my editing without a computer. That sounds very—very—good to me. In fact, I’m swooning a bit right now just thinking about it.
However, I’ve got to be realistic. Although I can generally pick out the more promising pictures from the negative, I’m not so confident in my ability to do this that I could just write the rest off without at least doing a contact print. Maybe over time I can adopt the Frank style of editing, but I’m going to need a lot more practice and experience.
In the meantime, I think there’s a darkroom in my future.
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* They also disturb me occasionally too.
This is one in a series of posts I’m doing over the next week (or so) on using film during the Leica Year project.
The Film: Grain
In the right kind of pictures, visible or even heavy grain can have an amplifying power that fits them like a finely tailored suit. It can be lush. Beautiful. Gritty. Nostalgic.
I don’t make those kinds of pictures. At least on purpose.
And so I’ve just accepted obvious grain as a fact of life with 35mm Tri-X. It usually doesn’t get in the way too much, but if I could reduce it drastically by pressing a button or tweaking a slider, I would do it.
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This is one in a series of posts I’m doing over the next week on using film during the Leica Year project.
The Film: Editing
Garry Winogrand would wait a year or more before processing a roll of film he’d exposed. Part of this was certainly due to his extremely prolific shooting habits but that’s not all. He didn’t want his memory of the experience of making a picture to influence his ability to judge its worth. Maybe he was shooting on a fine sunny morning with fantastic light and had beautiful women smiling at him everywhere he looked. Maybe in the afternoon Garry found a hundred dollar bill in the gutter and then later joined a friend for an epic meal, paid for by some unlucky stranger. Would that influence how he saw the pictures he took that day?
Very possibly.
I’m not sure I’m quite ready to wait a year, but I get where Winogrand was coming from and appreciate what even waiting a week or two can do to gain some perspective. Now, as I sift through the hundreds of selections I made from all the film I shot over the last year, I’m making different choices now than I did 9 months ago. Time does make a difference.
So back to film. You have to wait for it. For better or worse, you can’t check your shot and choose to delete it or share it with a thousand people a second after you made it. That’s how film enables a more objective approach to editing. You don’t have to be strong and disciplined. You just have to be little lazy or a little too busy.
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This is one in a series of posts I’m doing over the next week on using film during the Leica Year project.
The Film: Shoot Less. Not!
Film costs money. Digital doesn’t. That’s the conventional belief and so it seems to follow that using film would lead to fewer exposures. Slow down. Plan more. Make each frame count.
I thought going back to film would have this effect on me and initially it did. I remember the first roll of Tri-X I burned. Each shot was a process itself. I was slow. Deliberate. This was certainly due in part to the strange camera. But it was also because each shot was costing me about 12 cents, not accounting for my own time to roll, develop, and scan.
After the first few rolls though, I found that I gradually drifted back to my old way of working with digital. Reasons:
- I had a quota. Duh. I’d committed to shooting 3 rolls a week and this wasn’t my day job.
- I’d already self corrected with digital. I’ve already gone through many cycles of taking way too many digital pictures and then having to deal with the consequences. If I value my time and I care enough about my pictures to do what it takes to manage them properly, it’s clear to me that digital isn’t free.
- It’s 35mm. I like to work fast and intuitively with a small format camera. Experiment. Take risks. It’s less about personal expression and more of a discovery process where I learn to see more clearly by making pictures. For me, this approach requires a small camera that disappears. If I’m concerned about setting up the shot properly so I get everything just right in one take, I may as well be using a different format.
So, in the end, using film didn’t change how I prefer to use small cameras. Part of me is a bit disappointed because I believe a much slower method of working could have different but equally important rewards. The idea of going out in the morning with a few sheets of 4x5 for a day and making just one or two exposures really appeals to me for certain subjects. Subjects I discovered first with my freewheeling 35mm camera.
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This is one in a series of posts I’m doing over the next week on using film during the Leica Year project.
The Film: In (Disconnected) Parts
Like I wrote here, I’d originally planned to write a single longish post covering all my thoughts on working with Tri-X over the last year. Change of plan. Instead, I’m going to try breaking this one up over several shorter posts appearing over the next week. Why? To be honest, I’m finding it hard to connect all the seemingly random thought chunks I have about film into a single cohesive thingy that doesn’t embarrass me. Secondly, I think shorter pieces are more Tumblr dashboard friendly.
You know what I mean. You’re grooving along, looking at all the nice pictures your pals are making and then you hit this big long toilet paper sheet of text. What do you do? Brain shift to read the text or move on to more visual goodness? How much time do you have to spend with me?
Not much I’d bet.
At least some of you read my rambling stuff even though it would be easier not to. You guys have been really patient and indulgent with me on this, and I thank you for it. But I want to try something different. If this works out, I think I may be able to make myself write more—which is what I really want and for my own reasons. Often it’s the knitting together of these different ideas that takes the most time, as my dear wife the novelist will tell you. She’d also probably say I’m wimping out right now and that I should just (wo)man up and bleed from my eyeballs like the rest of them. But dammit Jim, I’m a photographer not a writer. And that’s that.
