Fishing with film
By Carlos Barria
In the “old” days, back before digital photography, photographers used to lug around tons of extra luggage, portable dark rooms, and set up shop in their hotel bathrooms. Or they would send their film — by motorcycle, car or even plane — to somebody else in a hotel or office close by to develop it, scan it and file. Or they might have to scramble and look for a lab in the middle of a crisis, in a foreign country. I don’t think my colleague Joe Skipper speaks Spanish, but I know that when he covered a showdown at Colombia’s Justice Ministry in the 80s, he learned how to say, “Mas amarillo!,” “More yellow!
North America chief photographer Gary Hershorn arrives to the Vancouver international airport with all his photo lab luggage. REUTERS/Stringer
I began my career as a photographer at the beginning of the digital era, working at La Nacion in Argentina. There, in 2000, I had a front row seat to the transition. I shot film myself, but for a very short period.
La Nacion newspaper photographer Rafael Calvino edits film at the newspaper lab in Buenos Aires. Courtesy of Hernan Zenteno
I have to confess that I always admired photographers who worked with film. I admired their patience. I love people who are organized and meticulous working with film; I’m definitely not one of them.
La Nacion newspaper photographer Rodrigo Abd cut film the lab of paper as he edits his pictures. Byline Hernan Zenteno
Fashion Week, New York
Models, tall models, skinny models, Russian models, French models…sounds exotic? Yeah, not so much. Covering fashion week in New York sounds like a pretty glamorous assignment but it could hardly be further from it.
Shooting fashion week has more in common with running a marathon than it does running a sprint. There are 8 days, some 75 shows in the tents, dozens more off site, plus preparation photos. We shoot the models backstage and the designers getting ready, we shoot the front row celebrities arriving and we shoot the show from the pit.
The pit could also be called the pit of despair. Imagine taking 200 photographers with all their requisite gear, cameras, laptops, ladders, monopods, boxes and cases, putting them in a space that realistically 50 photographers could work comfortably in. Throw in 14 hour days, little regard for hygiene and an open bar in the evening and you have a recipe for a sociological experiment gone awry.
I personally shot dozens of shows and filed hundreds of photos. The images after a few days begin to homogenize and making something different becomes a real challenge. As a photographer I am always trying to redefine my visual narrative and create interesting dynamic photos.
Remember the days of black and white film?
Do you remember the days of black and white film? Life before digital and the preview screen? How about shooting one frame per minute?
I have made several trips with U.S. President George W. Bush to his ranch in Crawford, Texas over the last couple of years.
Crawford is a small, sleepy town, population 705, a place where time has seemed to have passed them by. There are no hotels, one small flashing traffic light, and definitely not a Starbucks to be found.
A Holga is a $25 toy, plastic, medium format rangefinder camera with one fixed exposure, and I have been using it for about 7 years. I brought some 120 Tri-x film on a visit when we had a couple days with no planned coverage of the President, just to kill some time and have some fun. But I realized that a lot of the images that I was trying to make had more of a horizontal look than the traditional square 6×6 images produced by the Holga, and thought they might work better as “sprocket” pix. If you put 35mm film in a Holga, it will expose the entire negative, including the edges numbers and sprocket holes. I thought it might be an interesting photo project to shoot some views of this town whose notoriety is home of the “Western White House” and the impact his presence would have on their town. I wanted the images to have an old dusty, historical look to it. And with Bush nearing the end of his presidency, it might be interesting to make a picture package on the town that will probably slip back into its quiet world, probably losing its most famous resident when he retires down the road to Dallas.
Shooting with a Holga is a very patient process. The viewfinder is nowhere near the image you end up with, especially with sprocket photographs. The angle is much wider than it looks, having to correct for the parallax error, mentally blocking out the top and bottom thirds for the 35 mm film….ughhh, never mind, click! F/8 @ 1/100th second. Turn the winder knob 36 clicks, and you are ready for the next frame. Sometimes that is the best thing to do with a Holga, just trip the shutter and move on. Don’t over analyze it. It is after all… a toy camera!
But what I love about it is the simplicity of it all. Film, plastic lens, and a black box. The basics of photography. It’s not 10 fps, 15 second photo ops, or rocket science for that matter. The anticipation of the film to come back from the lab days later, getting a loupe and seeing what happened. Isn’t what this is all about? A simple image from a moment in time. Trying to create something from nothing, and having some fun in the process. If you don’t slow down every now and then, the world just might pass you by…..
Where do you take your film to be developed? If you wanted some printed from the negatives, where do you take them for that? I have several 3 1/4 x 4 1/2 negatives over 60 years old that I want scanned. I can’t find a place to do this yet. Thanks. Jan Humphrey.
-
Resident Photographers Blog Expert
-
The Wall
like the analogy you draw to hunting and fishing (very much inspired by Bariloche, I guess). totally agree on the two modes of working: I always compare the two modes of working to the way you buy presents for someone: you either “search” for a present (more common) or you just happen to “find” one.