film fridays - the photographer becomes the photographed

my friend paco (rob) is being photographed while photographing. he's using an iphone (hipstamatic and instagram are his apps of choice), and i'm using a hasselblad xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film. i have to say, after seeing his pics, i'm very, extremely, utterly tempted to get an iphone simply for the built in camera. no, it will not take the place of my holga, xpan, or other film cameras... but it would be awfully handy to have everything together in one device so that i have a camera on me at all times. the camera you carry is the camera you use, as they say.

don't worry. i'll never be turned completely to the digital side. :)

film fridays - please respect

if a sign requesting respect is, er, respected, it gives me hope that perhaps we can do the same in general within the population. unless we need to wear signs on our persons at all times asking for respect. what if respect doesn't match my shoes today? dammit.

maybe we need to make respect the new black. that way it will match everything, including my black, black heart.

anyway, happy new year (almost), and see you on the flip side!

the specs: hasselblad xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - grand central station (another take)

wherever you happen to be headed during whatever holidays you celebrate, have a safe trip, be thankful for what you have, and strive to make things better for yourself as well as those around you!

the specs: hasselblad xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - free

i made this image in new york city during my last trip there. i just loved that there was nothing in the "free" box. :)

the specs: hasselblad xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - 5 pointz tracks

i made this image in new york city in the 5 pointz, a graffiti covered block of buildings. this shot didn't showcase the graffiti so much as it did the subway tracks and the barbed wire fence keeping the back lot private. i liked the way the lines came together, and was happy we had some clouds in the sky that day for texture.

the specs: hasselblad xpan II camera and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - the watcher

i made this photo in the 5 pointz in new york city. you can see a little more of the buildings a few posts down in the levitation photo, but the place is literally covered in graffiti. i liked this particular piece of graffiti because it just seemed to watch over you... or glare at you. depends on how you look at it i guess. :)

the specs: hasselblad xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - follow the white rabbit head

the rally for sanity / keep fear alive march on the mall in washington dc last month was a bit of a challenge to photograph. for starters, i'm shorter than just about everyone else on the planet, so trying to get a decent vantage point above the crowds was pretty futile. in addition to that, i had my parents in tow from pennsylvania, so i didn't want to wander too far away from them or they'd be lost in the wilds of dc. i contemplated strapping a day's worth of food and supplies to them just in case, but decided i should be a good child and guide them myself. :)

in any case, i decided to wander a bit on the outskirts of the rally so that i could move around and get some photos that way. for the most part i was not terribly happy with any of my images, but i did come away with this amusing one of a guy parading around the head to his rabbit costume. i saw that and got in as close as i could to get a few frames. the feet from above were from people perched on a moving truck they had rented for the occasion - if only i had thought of that!

the specs: hasselblad xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

film... tuesdays? - xpan levitation

i realized that i missed last friday's "film fridays" post. but, i have a good excuse - i was busy developing and printing 5 rolls of xpan II film and 5 rolls of holga film! and what's more, here's one of those images - it's my friend paco (the rest of the world knows him as rob) levitating in the 5 pointz - i took this photo during a visit to new york city last month. i took a similar photo of paco back in the late 90's in front of some graffiti in our college town of kent, ohio, and we thought it would be funny to make another for the new millennium.

the specs: hasselblad xpan II camera and kodak tmax 400 film.

and i'll try to get back to posting these on friday now that i have a lot of new material to share. :)

film fridays - street performers, nyc

this is sort of a fun random image from nyc a while back. friends and i were wandering around and ended up watching these street performers work the crowd while we waited to rendezvous with the rest of our party. two of my friends can be seen just under the jumping performer / over the line of jumpees in the background. :)

the specs: nikon fm3a and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - the guggenheim

this is an image taken at the guggenheim museum in new york city. the lines and architecture are incredible, but i was happy to catch those two people peeking over the edge of the top floor.

specs: nikon fm3a + kodak tmax 400 35mm film.

film fridays - harpers ferry

this panoramic photo was taken a while back during a day trip to harpers ferry in west virginia. specs: made with an xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - times square

i was in nyc visiting friends a few years back and we were on our way through the city when i made this image. i've seen a lot of photos of times square, but i wanted to take back something that seemed less commercial and more gritty than the current touristy vibe that the area has. the black and white film helped with that, i think.

specs: taken with a nikon fm3a and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - the grand canyon

the grand canyon in black and white. i have a bunch of photos of it, but i like this one because of the shadow from the tree on the cliff where i was perched.

specs: shot on kodak tmax 400 film with a nikon fm3a camera (i think).

film fridays - platinum print

i know this image looks a bit different than some of the other film images i've posted, with a strange color cast and all. that is not a mistake - it's a platinum - palladium print! i've made silver print versions of this image as well, but the ghostly quality that i like so much about this image shines through with the platinum technique, so this is the version i prefer and show.

the specs: original negative was made with a hasselblad 501CM camera, and then the negative was enlarged to roughly 5x7. i think this particular image was enlarged digitally (cheating!), but there are plenty others that i enlarged by hand using an enlarger and reversal film, so i don't feel too bad about this - besides, we had to do one digital enlargement for our class. :)

the final negative was then contact printed to a piece of paper that i hand coated in the platinum - palladium solution and exposed under light in a contact print frame. this particular print is on archival hot press watercolor paper (arches was my paper of choice back in the day).

film fridays - multiple exposure

i made the portrait part of this week's film fridays image while still an undergrad in college. i was taking my very first studio photography class, and recruited just about everyone i knew to come and sit for me to let me take their photos. this guy was in my creative writing class, and it was a really fun session. fast forward about 7 years, and i took another photo of the crystal pool doors at glen echo park here in maryland (these are the old, decaying, beat up doors i was talking about in an earlier post!). i was teaching my photo class at the time about creating double exposure prints in the darkroom and how they could take two separate negatives and combine them into one image, and made this print as a demo. i really liked it, so i kept it on file.

both images were shot with 35mm film cameras, and i believe both were nikon N90s bodies. the film for both would have been kodak black and white (either tmax or tri-x, not sure which).

and yes, i know you could do something similar to this with digital, and what's more, i know how to do this sort of effect digitally... but that takes all the fun out of it. :)

film fridays - matt

i've always liked this photo i made of my friend matt several years back. it's not exactly a portrait, not fashion either. but the minimal aspects of it, the focus on tiny details of his jacket, and the implied body language are all kind of cool to me. it's just a little tiny sliver of time that is very dear to me, and this photo serves as a reminder.

like most of my "film fridays" choices, this image never fit with any exhibits so has not seen the light of day until now.  that is one of the driving forces behind this weekly feature, since everyone tends to see and know my holga work.  not that i don't plan to share my holga images more, but other work deserves attention on this blog too.

the specs: made with a nikon fm3a camera, and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - winged woman

look! it's another color film image! but, like the last one i posted, this was captured on medium format chrome film, and NOT negative. these rich blues and contrast just wouldn't have happened by using film - at least not without the help of photoshop. if you're gonna shoot color film, then SHOOT COLOR and go straight to the chrome. :)

the specs: photographed outside an art gallery in sedona, arizona, with a hasselblad 501CM camera and fuju velvia 120 chrome film.

film fridays - san francisco

this is the famous golden gate bridge in san francisco - i visited there in 2004.  this image was made with a hasselblad xpan II camera and kodak t-max 400 film.  i love the xpan because it's such a wildly different crop than anything else i use, and it forces me to think about my compositions in a different way. i think this photo is a good example of that, utilizing the negative space throughout most of the frame!

film fridays - new york city

i made this image in new york city in 2003 or 2004 (i'd have to look it up) during a visit there. i was standing inside the guggenheim museum, watching people come in the revolving door.  don't worry, i actually looked at the inside of the museum too. :)

the specs: nikon FM3A camera body, and kodak t-max 400 film.

film fridays - arizona

i know you are all confused now.  am i not the one who said i do not shoot color?  yes, i did say that. but, this is different because the image above was made on medium format chrome film and not negative film. slide film is much, MUCH more awesome than negative for a lot of reasons, but mostly because the colors are so much more vibrant and rich. if you're gonna shoot color, i say, SHOOT color, and don't mute it down. but, maybe that's just me.

anyway, the specs: this is my husband andy, during a trip to arizona in the spring of 2002.  the image was made with a hasselblad 501CM and 80mm lens, and i think the film is fuji velvia 100F chrome.

that's all for this week's film friday, so see you next week!