Film Images

I love shooting film and I got a roll back from the lab today. One of the best things about shooting film is getting to use film cameras. I love how film cameras work, you have to think and pay attention because there is no instant gratification screen on the back of the camera. These frames came from a 1950s Kodak Signet 35 camera. I currently have a roll of 120 Tri-X in a Yashica 124G twin lens reflex camera. I also love shooting with my Hasselblad Xpan. The Xpan and the Kodak Signet are both rangefinder cameras and they are really cool to shoot with because everything always looks in focus and viewfinder never blacks out on RF cameras or on tlrs either for that matter. While we are on the subject of equipment, I read the other day of the Online Photographer that Leica has made their last film camera. Kinda sad to think that there will be no more new Leica film cameras. The company still makes digital rangefinder cameras, but the nostalgic part of me hates to see the film world slowly passing away. There have been several stories lately about Steve McCurry shooting the last roll of Kodachrome. Today I saw a cool story from the St.Louis Post Dispatch about one of their photographers shooting his last roll of Kodachrome 200 at the Missouri State Fair. The photo above is of Jalen sitting on our front porch in our hammock that Jenna and I brought back from Honduras.
This is Jackson in the same hammock from Honduras.
Walked out to take trash out the other morning and this beautiful yellow leaf was laying on the back door mat. I loved the contrast of the light colored leaf against the black mat.
As a photographer it is hard to pass up clouds. B&W is not always the best solution for sunsets but I liked how this turned out anyway.

Feeling Like my Dad

Got my Kodak Signet 35 out this past weekend to shoot some photos of the kids. Julie was gone to a workshop in New Orleans and I was home with the kids for the weekend and the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday. We had a great time playing outside on Monday. We went for a bike ride and ended up by Burger King and I thought "its a holiday we should splurge and just eat lunch at BK." As we were riding up smelling those flame grilled burgers and listening to the crunch of the compactors at the metal recycling center I realized I didn't have my wallet. We rode all the way back home and got my wallet and then rode all the way back to BK. We had a wonderful dollar menu lunch and headed back home to play some more and get ready for Jamie's basketball games that night. I took a few photos along the way and I even got this shot of the gum ball tree in our back yard that I kinda liked.
Now I finished up the roll of film and took it to USA Drug on Tuesday to get the film developed. Today, I picked up the film and as the images upload in Lightroom I was surprised to see that the first frames on the roll were from early in September. What! I had the same roll of film in the camera for almost five months. That moment I started feeling like my Dad. In his photography heyday he could get the better part of a year on a 36 exposure roll of Kodachrome 64. He always shot slides and I remember getting out the old Kodak Carousel Projector and seeing those vividly saturated images come up on the screen. I can still hear the distintive clicking of the slide trays as they advanced and how it would hang up if you didn't push the button just right and the loud whirl of the cooling fan trying to keep that bright projector bulb cool. I still have that projector, Dad gave it to me when he upgraded to a fancy auto focus, remote control slide projector. When I was in Jr.high and high school I shot a ton of slides. I was never that big on Kodachrome although I did shoot a fair amount of it, I really prefered the more vivid colors of Fujichrome. I remember my Youth Minister, Joe Godley, finding me one Sunday and telling me not to worry about buying film for summer camp because he had found a bunch of slide film for $1 a roll and he had bought 50 rolls. That summer we had 50 rolls of Kodachrome 25. What a miserably slow film to try to shoot all the action of camp with. I think my flash range was about 7 ft and that was with my 50mm F2 lens on my old trusty Pentax K1000. Funny I remember having all that slow film but I don't remember any of the photos that I took that summer. Back in those days I had no appreciation of the great history of Kodachrome or Tri-X or any other of the classic old films. My last year as a counselor at camp Tommy Griffiths and I set up a B&W darkroom at camp. We would shoot all day and develop the film and make prints all night. I would love to spend a week at camp now with a film camera a bunch of Tri-X and an air conditioned darkroom. Well so much for the photo memories tonight. I hope you enjoy the photos of Jackson's football practice from back in September.