While I was attending Photo Field Trip in the spring I had a lot of things click for me. One of the biggest of those was the idea of returning to the exploration of film photography. In essence a return to my roots. Indie Film Lab was gracious enough to bring cameras and film for us to play with while we were at Field Trip. I woke up early in the morning to take a Fuji 6×9 camera out for a spin. When Josh placed that camera in my hands the weight of it, the way my fingers curled around it felt like going home. I hadn’t held a camera like that in over ten years. I was washed over with a lifetime of memories of making pictures. From that first point and shoot my mom shoved in my hands to get me out of her hair to hauling an 8×10 camera up the side of a mountain in college to the Pentax MG I carried everywhere for years (and still shoot on today as you’ll see) to Dustin gifting me my first digital SLR for our wedding. The tangibility of a lifetime of pictures brought tears to my eyes. I wandered around camp while most everyone else slept. I made pictures of nature instead of people – something I’ve never been terribly good at – and I enjoyed the hell out of myself. I was slow and deliberate in a way that you only are when you’re shooting film. My brain shifted back to the years I spent with a light meter in my hand (only now it was an iPhone app) and making pictures without a net woke something up in me. When I got the scans of the images weeks later it was like opening a treasured gift. I was transported back to those moments on a hillside where my heart broke open. I showed Dustin the scans and told him about how much I’d loved shooting film and how it felt like going home. A few weeks later he places a Mamiya 645 in my hands and my heart was filled to over flowing yet again. I’ve been making pictures on this camera for several weeks now, and when the scans come back I am always impressed by myself and also dissapointed. Manual focusing is hard you guys. But more than anything I love the feeling of that camera in my hands. The thought I have to put into making the images. There is no auto pilot. There is not an LCD screen to make sure. There is just the muscle memory of over 30 years of making images because it is the thing I must do. So here are some pictures of my favorite models – and even a few of me as Dustin plays with film photography as well. Let’s be honest, he’s WAY better at focusing than I am. I can’t wait to share more with you!!
