Friday, September 30, 2005
I'm testing out a new blog. I keep getting to a point where I feel like I've pigeon-holed a blog into a theme or concept, separate from my life, and I get bored with it. Hopefully the new concept will be flexible enough and the pigeonhole big enough for me not to get bored with it. I'll let you know if it feels like it can get off the ground.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
I stopped shooting black and white film regularly because the cost, inconvenience, and time required to make prints became prohibitive. Discovering negative scanning has put the bee back in me bonnet for shooting black and white. Scanning shots directly onto my computer and being able to upload them onto the web has been an additional incentive. When I was shooting black and white regularly, I was still web illiterate. Before, I had to carefully choose which shots to print off of contact sheets, and most frames never saw the light of day. The ones that did got stuck in an album or framed and given as gifts. With negative scanning, every shot can be enlarged and given a fair chance of exposure.
I rode into New York today and finished a roll of PX125 film that I've had for maybe 10 years and has been in and out of refrigerators for just as long. I never got into pushing and pulling film and manipulating exposures and processing to get a desired shot. I'm not technical at all, so that put me kindly into the serendipity school of shooting and processing. So if bizarreness comes out of this expired and abused roll of unusual Kodak black and white film which will probably be dumped in and processed with a bunch of rolls of Tri-X, I'll be thrilled.
I learned to appreciate the serendipity of the vagaries of film when I got several rolls of Tri-X processed in Bangkok and they obviously had never processed a roll of Tri-X, but had a manual written in Shakespearean English on how to do it. At first, I was horrified and upset that they "ruined" my negatives, but upon trying to make the best of it and printing some shots, I was pleasantly surprised and duly introduced to the world of "effect" photography:
June 9, 1997 - Thailand (uncorrected scan)
Unlike most of my black and white scans, the darkroom prints of these negatives were much better, although a bitch to figure out the exposures. Still, I can live with the above, although I'd correct the contrast, maybe blur out some of the graininess.
However, although serendipitous weirdness is good, I'm still a conventional photography purist, and not so much into cheap trick effect photography without a clear artistic vision. (right, that's why I started hearing voices saying, "buy me, buy me" when I saw a lomo fisheye camera at the Museum of Modern Art gift shop).
I like the idea of photographs as memory, rather than art. I've never thought of myself as an "artist" in anything I do. But photographs I like to look at have that "memory" quality to them, rather than great subject matter or perfect artistic composition. Instead, a "this happened" quality to something that may not have been noticed otherwise. A scene for someone's memory that got captured imperfectly in black and white, in two dimensions and definite borders. I also always flip my negatives to remove the memory another step from reality, since memory shouldn't be confused with reality. Unless there are words in the shot that are integral or would be distracting to the shot if left backwards (yes, the shot above is flipped - it's not what I saw).
I want to go shoot again tomorrow, but I need to find a place that sells the film that I want. Shops are open on Labor Day, aren't they? I can't believe I let myself run out of film!
I rode into New York today and finished a roll of PX125 film that I've had for maybe 10 years and has been in and out of refrigerators for just as long. I never got into pushing and pulling film and manipulating exposures and processing to get a desired shot. I'm not technical at all, so that put me kindly into the serendipity school of shooting and processing. So if bizarreness comes out of this expired and abused roll of unusual Kodak black and white film which will probably be dumped in and processed with a bunch of rolls of Tri-X, I'll be thrilled.
I learned to appreciate the serendipity of the vagaries of film when I got several rolls of Tri-X processed in Bangkok and they obviously had never processed a roll of Tri-X, but had a manual written in Shakespearean English on how to do it. At first, I was horrified and upset that they "ruined" my negatives, but upon trying to make the best of it and printing some shots, I was pleasantly surprised and duly introduced to the world of "effect" photography:
June 9, 1997 - Thailand (uncorrected scan)
Unlike most of my black and white scans, the darkroom prints of these negatives were much better, although a bitch to figure out the exposures. Still, I can live with the above, although I'd correct the contrast, maybe blur out some of the graininess.
However, although serendipitous weirdness is good, I'm still a conventional photography purist, and not so much into cheap trick effect photography without a clear artistic vision. (right, that's why I started hearing voices saying, "buy me, buy me" when I saw a lomo fisheye camera at the Museum of Modern Art gift shop).
I like the idea of photographs as memory, rather than art. I've never thought of myself as an "artist" in anything I do. But photographs I like to look at have that "memory" quality to them, rather than great subject matter or perfect artistic composition. Instead, a "this happened" quality to something that may not have been noticed otherwise. A scene for someone's memory that got captured imperfectly in black and white, in two dimensions and definite borders. I also always flip my negatives to remove the memory another step from reality, since memory shouldn't be confused with reality. Unless there are words in the shot that are integral or would be distracting to the shot if left backwards (yes, the shot above is flipped - it's not what I saw).
I want to go shoot again tomorrow, but I need to find a place that sells the film that I want. Shops are open on Labor Day, aren't they? I can't believe I let myself run out of film!
