Posts Tagged ‘Holga’

Stevensow is a fan of The Darkroom!

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Shooting film on a regular basis means you have to find some way to develop it.  Either you do it yourself (which honestly, I’m exploring the setup for that, including my own digital backend), or sending your film off mail order.  I’ve been using Richard Photo Lab, and they are great, but I need a second lab that’s a little more cost effective for sending off tests, or just fun personal work that I maybe doing.  I’ve been seeing ads for The Darkroom pop up on my facebook page every so often, and I decided that I would give them a try….and I’m so glad that I did.  These guys have been in business in California for 35 years, and I’m all for supporting labs that have been around that long with as much business as I possibly can!  The more that everyone shoots and develops film, the more that the big film companies (you know who you are), will realize “This film thing isn’t going away like we hoped it would, there’s still some business to be done with film”

A couple of months ago after I attended the FlashBus seminar in Dallas, I took to the streets, just me, my Holga and a roll of Fuji 800z:

 

 

Film is love…I’m in love with film!

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

As of late I’ve been buying film, because I’ve had this resurgence of wanting to shoot film.  I’m going to start trying to incorporate film in to some of my upcoming shoots, and then in the future I would like to do some shoots on film only!  from one of my previous posts this year, it’s pretty established that I have plenty of 35mm film, and then plenty black and white 35mm at that! (I need to get some color, which is to come!), but 120 film I’m kind of lacking on (because I only started toying with medium format 5 years ago, and the only medium format cameras that I had at that time were a Holga and a Lubitel 166)  I’ve now added a Yashica 124 to my mix, and I’m hoping to be able to set aside some funds to get a Bronica SqA (that’s right I love the square format), so I’m trying out different types of film; I bought some Kodak Portra NC to try it out, and then I’ve been wanting some comparable Fuji Stock (NPH & NPZ) to shoot and compare.   So thanks to Ebay, 15 rolls of film have made their way from parts outside of Texas to my door step, fresh stock too.

And also in my Ebay trawling, I managed to snag a Polaroid land model 220, so I bought me a couple of boxes of Polaroid from Adorama as well, looking forward to shooting those, and learning how to effectively shoot with an older Polaroid model!

*PS, for some reason I didn’t move my old yearbook out of the shot, but I guess in a way it’s appropriate, it was all film back in 93

My 2010 Resolutions….

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Okay, this is going to be a list my reso–actually, I’m tired of saying that word, let’s substitute goals.  Here is a list of goals that I want to accomplish this year.  Not in any particular order.  I know that we’re three four months into the year, but I’ve been late with a lot of things in the past; it’s how I rolled:

  • I didn’t get a cell phone until 1999, and I never had a pager; if I wasn’t at home you were going to talk to my answering machine

  • I didn’t start using digital until 3 years ago, and I bought a old D1X(which was 6 yrs old at that time)

  • I waited until age 33 to actually get serious and try to make my dream (photography for a living) a reality, why didn’t I try 10 years ago?

My 2010 Photography goals:


1.  Get physical with my imagery – Since these days so much is done digitally, alot of my photos just end up on my hard drive, or on this blog, nothing like the old days, when you had physical results from taking photographs.  You took photos,

You ended up with negatives or slides.   Some of those ended up in the form of prints


I want to make something physical – maybe put on my own show somewhere; something small, but something where I have an end to go along with the means.  Maybe I’ll do a photozine or a book, but something that I can hold in my hand, and in turn hand to someone.


2. Film – A while ago me and my wife were watching Kalifornia, in that movie Michelle Forbes is a photographer, and she spends the movie shooting with a Nikon F3 (I believe) and she asked me if I missed shooting film.  Even though I tailed off shooting film seriously over the last 10 years, it took me a little by surprise.  I did miss film somewhat, I recently ran a roll of slide film through my F4, I had forgotten how colors pop on slides!  So, I’m going to shoot more film this year, I’ve collected enough of it over the past 5 years that I haven’t shot

And I’ve accumulated more than enough film cameras…they need to be shot with.

3. Get project oriented – Come up with some projects that interest me, and then make them happen, not sitting around saying “I wish I could shoot, blah,blah, blah, maybe I’ll get to do that someday…”  Why does it have to be someday?  And when I start it, finish it.  What good is a project that you start, attack with full steam, and then just give up?  Even if it doesn’t work out like I envisioned – at least I can say, I finished….


4.  Keep a creative journal – this I’ve actually started:

and started: and started: and started


But it would be nice to keep it going, not write a page, or couple of pages, but actually have a book that I can come back to for inspiration.  And when I put ideas down in it…actually come back and try some of them


5. Take more personal photos -  life moves so fast it seems these days, the only way that we can remember the little details is to write it down, video it, or take pictures.  Like these of my wife and my niece decorating Easter cookies.

Something little now, but how are they going to feel about this moment looking back on these pictures in 10 years?  15 years? How am I going to feel?


6.  Network – get myself out there to other photographers, become part of the community.  It’s how you learn and how you find and create opportunities.


7.  And probably the most important thing on this list; getting comfortable with at some point I’m going to have to tell people that I’m a photographer.  Saying that phrase is heavy; there’s so much expectation attached to it.  You can read the books, take the workshops, the classes, do the TFCD work, do the photo zines, the 365 projects.  All that is so you can live it.  You can love it, because it’s what you are.  The moment you say that phrase, it’s what you do.