K. Carmichael

Category: film photo a day

  • September 1-9

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    Film photo a day project roll one is back! Wow, I’d forgotten how grainy Tri-X 400 is, although the non-adjustable metering of the Olympus XA2 isn’t doing me any favors. I suspect I could improve some of these by rescanning, but that takes a lot of time on my ancient Epson photo scanner.

    There’s a bunny hiding in the photo of the front of the house/front yard.

    Day 3, my favorite of days 1-9

    My A-11 flash that attaches to the XA2 is broken, and I could really use a flash for this project on some days. Maybe I’ll nix my “same camera” rule so I can use one of my other Olympus compacts that has a working flash when I need some light. (I have an original Stylus Epic and a few Stylus Epic zooms that I picked up from a thrift store when I went to visit a friend in California).

    My original thinking was that forcing myself to use the XA2 with no flash and 400 speed film would make me be more creative in my choice of subjects and compositions, and to a certain extent it has – but it’s also made me feel more annoyed and guilty when I realize at the end of the day that it’s too dark to take anything outside and there are few locations inside that work with no flash.

  • So how’s the photo-a-day project going?

    Ha! Well…there have been a few bumps in the road, but I’m still trying.

    It’s day 27 of the month and I am on picture 32. Three more days of September and four more exposures (assuming I didn’t wind too much when I loaded the film). My goal is one roll per month, which gives me a little breathing room in case I flub a shot or find something I just have to take a shot of after I’ve already taken the shot for the day.

    There have also been a few days where I either forgot to take a picture, or I was feeling really blah and just didn’t make myself when I got to the end of the day and had no picture. Perfection is the enemy of completion, though, so I’m not letting it make me quit again.

    Since I’m still not done with roll 1, there are obviously no pictures to share yet. I haven’t figured out if I’m going to try to develop this at home or send it out. I have developing stuff, but I may have to get some fresh developer (I haven’t developed in probably 7 years – I used HC-110 and still have the bottle, but not sure if it will be too old to use). It may be worth it in terms of time and effort (and predictable, successful results) to just send it out.

    To make this post a little more interesting, here’s a photo-a-day project I stumbled across that was done as a farewell to Ektachrome (which sadly I never got to shoot, even in the 90s).

    And here’s one of my own favorite film shots, on Kodak Gold, taken about 8 years ago of decorations in a store window for Winchester’s yearly Apple Blossom festival.

    Happy Apple 2

  • Film Photo a Day Project

    I’ve tried (and failed) at Photo a Day projects before. But ever since I saw this article on that photographer’s film Photo a Day project, I’ve really wanted to do one myself. I originally shared that link to Facebook back in January, and what I said then still holds true, so I’ll repost it here.

    There’s something about the way film captures a memory that is different than digital. The images aren’t as “perfect,” but they bring something with them that is lacking in photos taken with a phone or a digital camera. They feel more emotional, more like they are capturing how you remember something rather than just how you saw it. Maybe that doesn’t make sense, but it’s just different. Better, a lot of the time. I miss shooting film.

    In the spirit of “better late than never,” I’m going to be starting my own “film photo a day” project, from September 2019 to September 2020.

    One photo, each day, one year, with one camera, and one film.

    Let’s see how it goes.

    360 exposures for a 366-day year; guess I’ll have to pick up one more roll towards the end to finish up. I’m thinking positively!