F&CK Digital Part 3
Here’s one more for the revival of film. The folks over at The Impossible Project are in the process of bringing back Polaroid film. Here’s to hoping they’ll have something like Type-55.
Head over to their website and show your support:
http://www.the-impossible-project.com/
F&CK Digital
There must be some kind of movement going on. It seems to me there is a digital backlash at the moment. Maybe not a full scale revolt, but it seems to me like a lot of photographers I know who had all but switched to digital are now shooting more film.
I know I started shooting film again about 6 months ago when I decided to buy an old Rolleiflex to carry around with me from time to time. Just this week I went ahead and bought a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II (for really cheap I might add… a barely used demo kit with lens & film back for only $850!!!). And, a little over a year ago I bought a 4×5 camera primarily to shoot Polaroid Type-55 (that idea unfortunately went out the door quickly with Polaroid film’s demise).
Now, I must confess that most of my film shooting will be for personal projects. I’ll sprinkle in some film shots on editorial shoots when budgets allow for both digital fees and film related expenses. For commercial projects, it’ll be digital for sure since the Art Directors usually like seeing what’s going on as we shoot. But, for the projects that actually mean something to me, I’ll likely be using one of my film cameras (not that my paying jobs don’t mean anything… but you know what I mean).
I just got done shooting an editorial assignment for Inc. magazine. I brought out my new RZ67 and shot film for the first time on an editorial shoot for quite some time. Having never used an RZ67 before I didn’t want to rely on it alone, so I got the primary shot out of the way with my digital system (Contax 645 w/ Phase One P25+). But once I did, I switched over to the RZ67 and had a bit more fun with it. It was nice shooting and not running back to a monitor every 10 shots or looking at the LCD on the back of the camera to see what we had.
This isn’t digital vs film quality debate. I’m not going to say one is of better quality than the other. I’m not shooting film again for quality reasons. They are just different. I shoot differently when shooting film. I like the way I shoot with film. I slow down and think about things more than I would with digital. And anything that can get me to think has to be good.
A.P.E. Likes Me
Seems that I made the cut over at Rob Haggart’s A Photo Editor slideshow of photographers he likes. You can head over to the Fickr page or the slideshow website and check out a lot of great work.
Just remember to come back here and hire me.
Cool
They say you can learn as much about the photographer who takes a picture as you do about the person being photographed. I was never really sure about that, especially when it came to my work. What did my images say about me?Then one day my friend and assistant Emily Merrill said something that struck a chord with me. She said that I’m always trying to make people look cool. I never really thought about it, I just did what I did. But in looking back at most of my photographs, I can see some truth to it, for the most part. I’m not talking about some kind of ultra-look-at-how-cool-I-am kind of cool. To me its a subtle cool. My subjects tend to look like they don’t give a crap. And in particular, they don’t give a crap about being cool. Because, anyone who gives a crap about being cool, isn’t cool.If pressed, I would say that this subconscious desire to make people look cool stems from my lack of coolness. I mean, I think I’m cool, but doesn’t everybody think they’re cool? Unlike a lot of people, I can admit that outside my own head, I’m not cool. Usually it’s high school where people become paranoid about coolness. I wasn’t unpopular in high-school. I wasn’t one of the kids that all the cool people made fun of. I wasn’t one of the cool kids either. I wasn’t particularly anything. I was pretty shy back then and I had my few friends and that was about it. So, not a dork, not cool… just, there.Oh, don’t think I’m trying to pour my heart out here and get sympathy for feeling left out in high-school (who wasn’t… and I’m not talking to you Johnny Tango, we know you were cool in high-school). But if I had to pinpoint where my preoccupation (if you can call it that) for coolness began, that would be it.So now that I have this realization about my images, how will this affect the way I work? Will I now attempt to knowingly make people look cool, when before it was just the way I worked. If I do that, things may seemed forced. And anytime something is forced, it doesn’t usually work. Who knows. Maybe I should do the opposite, maybe I should make people look uncool or quirky. I just don’t feel like that would be me. So, maybe I should just get out of my head and do what I do.What I listened to last week:The Rolling Stones, Exile On Main St.What I watched last week:Mad MenWhat I read last week:Image Makers, Image Takers
