12 photos from 12 rolls of film - Why Am I Making This? Issue #22
Hello dear friends,
It’s Julien! You know me. Artist who does a lot of hand-wringing about art in this newsletter. I’m happy to report that my frenzied burnout feelings from last month have mellowed out a bit, and this April I’m... basically fine. A little bit stressed about upcoming plans. A little bit wistful about life, the changing of the seasons. A little bit unsatisfied with everything, as usual. Overall, normal. Fine.
I mentioned last month that I had a bunch of rolls of film at the lab from a December 2021 trip to Slovenia. I have them back now! Plus four (!!!) additional rolls of film I have shot since my photographer heart reawakened in mid-March. In total, I have 12 recently-processed rolls of film, so I thought it would be fun, in this newsletter, to show one representative photo from each roll. I’ve been doing a few other creative things - pottery, for the most part. (I’ll be selling pottery in a local Maine store at the beginning of May - ask me about it if you’re interested!) But I’ll have a better update for you on pottery things next month, I think.
For now, photos.
PART 1: SLOVENIA IN EARLY WINTER
(Note: if the photo is a square, it was taken with my medium-format camera, the Yashica A. If it isn’t, it was taken with my Canon A1, a 35mm camera.)
1) Film stock: FPP Retrochrome - Finicky film to use, but when it's good it's great.
2) Film stock: Ektar 100 - Most of the trip to Slovenia, it was cloudy and foggy. It was sunny for about an hour one afternoon and I ran out to take some photos on the Ektar I had already loaded (it's known for super bright colors!) and was so happy I did. The three photos I took in the sun are some of my favorites from the trip.
3) Film stock: Cinestill 800T - Loaded this film for night photos like this one, but some of the daytime ones came out pretty nice as well. Well-suited to foggy conditions, maybe.
4) Film stock: Tri X 400 - I've been to Slovenia a bunch of times while my partner lived there, but I felt like I never took any good photos of Ljubljana, which is a beautiful city. I tried to make up for it this time, but I wish it had ever been sunny, and that pandemic anxiety didn't make going into the city so stressful.
5) Film stock: Lomochrome Metropolis - Metropolis in the city! Not sure if I know how to use this film stock to best effect... my partner commented when we were looking through these photos, that I liked taking pictures of signs. I guess I do.
6) Film stock: Tri X 400 - This type of photo, of an out-of-focus person in the foreground with a beautiful background, is kind of popular at the moment, and I think this is the first time I took one successfully myself.
7) Film stock: Colorplus 200 - The endless cloud cover was annoying sometimes, but when it got foggy, it sure was atmospheric.
8) Film stock: Lomo 400 - I've always thought about taking pictures on this village train platform. Glad I finally got to.
PART 2: MAINE IN EARLY SPRING
9) Film stock: Lomochrome Metropolis - Again, sometimes I love the results of Metropolis, but it's hard for me to predict when. Mostly it was kind of so-so in the cloudy March woods, but I liked how this one came out.
10) Film stock: Gold 200 - The sunny forest light was so beautiful on Kodak Gold. Also, I had a promist filter on my lens which made the sun on the river glow incredibly.
11) Film stock: Portra 400 - First time using Portra in 120!
12) Film stock: Kodak Ultramax - This one's exciting; it's a photo from the test roll of film from a new camera!!! I love how the test photos came out and am so excited to use it more.
Here's the camera (taken on Polaroids, of course...) - and an extra little fun bonus Polaroid of my partner, my long-suffering photo assistant.
The exciting thing about this camera (the Olympus Pen FT, from the late 60's/early 70's) is that it takes half-frame photos, which means the viewfinder is portrait-oriented (wild) and also means I get 72 photos on a 36-photo roll of film. Grain is also more pronounced and the focus is so soft... Here's a close-up of the seaside photo above. I think it looks so painterly.
The possibilities feel endless. You'll for sure be seeing more photos from this camera. But for now... that's about it. More thoughts, pottery, etc, next month, I'm sure. Take care out there.
Your friend,
Julien