Spending a little bit of time playing with the balance between light and shadow on black and white film. This image was a bit of a challenge and I probably sat in front of the computer moving the brightness and contrast dials back and forth on my film scanning software for way too long. I can only imagine how obsessive I would be over this negative if I was making a print in the darkroom!
Black and White Film
Nudes In The Tall Grass
I’ve been organizing negative sleeves the last few days and pulling out a few frames here and there to make fresh scans of images I long ago disregarded or dismissed. Sometimes this can be one of the many powerful aspects of working with film. With a digital camera there is a tendency to delete the images we don’t initially have a fondness for. Either that or we tend to move the images to some external hard drive which in turn gets shoved in a drawer and eventually becomes incompatible with whatever operating system is current.
In other words, the images are quickly forgotten.
With film, there is more of an incentive to revisit your old work every once in a while. Sometimes there will be a frame you didn’t think much about when you first developed the negative but might speak to you years later. In the case of this image, I don’t think I ever even scanned this particular frame. There were a few other images on the roll that I gravitated toward and this frame was set aside in my mind. Now here we are almost seven years later and I’m giving it a fresh scan and posting it here on my blog.
Let's All Appreciate The Outdoors
I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I will never again take the outdoors for granted. Of course, I've always appreciated the ability to go outside and breath in the fresh air and enjoy nature a little bit. It is one of the primary reasons I continue to live in the Pacific Northwest after all. That being said, after a few weeks of self isolation I can safely say that I am really craving an afternoon of just strolling through the woods and smelling the flowers.
This photograph was made back toward the beginning of summer while out on a hike in the Columbia River Gorge. It was one of those unmarked sort of trails that aren’t difficult to find out there and a lot of wildflowers were in full bloom. I didn’t have any color film with me which was unfortunate but I do feel like black and white was a good choice in capturing the wispy nature of the clouds that were also racing across the sky.
Life Continues During a Pandemic
Much like most of the world at this point I continue to self-quarantine at home. I fully admit this has put me in a strange headspace. On one hand, I’ve always been a fairly introverted person and I relish in alone time, not to mention love having all the time in the world to work on projects. On the other hand, with so many people scared and uncertain I’m really not feeling all that creative.
In order to keep some sense of normalcy going on however I’ve made it a point to do something photography related every single day. Mostly this means developing film and editing images. This images comes from my latest photoshoot with Devi which we did back in January. It was an incredibly quick session which we did around eight o’clock in the morning in a hotel room in downtown Portland. I was lucky to have some fairly decent natural light coming in through the window which is a bit of a small miracle considering it was January. Traditionally overcast in January is so thick in Portland that early morning hours are pretty dark. I did have to use a tripod though as I was photographing this at around 1/15th of a second wide open at f/2.8.
I’ve also made it a point to type at least one physical letter a day. Most of the time I’ve been writing letters to politicians, local, state, and federal. In part because I feel like now is probably the most important time the average person can speak out and also in part because I just simply want the excuse to use my typewriters. Considering I seem to have all the time in the world right now I might as well use it constructively.
Over the next few days I also plan on loading some film in a camera and making some images. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to undertake as a subject matter as of now. Maybe some self portraits. Obviously getting outdoors and working with a model is not much of an option right now. However, sometimes making art is about working with what is available to you. That’s an important thing to keep in mind. Especially right now.
Making Art in Uncertain Times
These are very uncertain times. Like many people I’ve been staying indoors as much as I possibly can and have been limiting my interactions with others to times when it is totally necessary. In some ways I’ve always thrived on self isolation, but it feels different when one is doing it not out of choice, but out of necessity. It puts a looming gray stormy cloud over everything.
I feel like I am far luckier than many people out there. I have things to do at home to occupy my time and at least on the surface pull me away from all the negative news swirling around the internet. I’ve made it a point every single day to turn off my phone and just work on art to the extent that I am able with the supplies I have on hand. This means editing images that I’ve meant to get around to for years, developing old rolls of film, and experimenting a little with cyanotype prints at home. I’ve been greatly feeling the itch to get outdoors and do some photoshoots but I think that will just have to wait for a little while longer.
With a little bit of luck, and keeping in mind that we are all in this together right now, hopefully these frightening times will be a distant memory sooner rather than later. In fact, I’ve keep this blog entry a little bit vague in the hopes that years from now it will be floating around the back woods of the internet and someone will find it and say, “what was he talking about!?” For some reason that is a comforting thought to me.
The photograph above was made with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Fomapan 100 speed film. The scene was lit with a single 250w Smith Victor studio lamp totally raw, with no umbrella or reflector that I would typically use to soften up the light a bit. I think I exposed this roll of film about six years ago and my memory of that day is that I was feeling a little bit rebellious. Like I didn’t want to follow any rules or take direction from anyone. For me that evidently translates to pulling off the defuser umbrella from my studio lights. Ha!