Eat. Sleep. Shoot.

Tulips.

Tmax 400 in Rodinal 1:50. 

Encroaching.

Tmax in Xtol stock.

From roll #7 of my 365 days on film project. 

Tmax in Xtol stock.

My first time developing with Xtol. It’s a pain in the a** to work with, but the results are beautiful! 

Experimenting with using my own written text with my images. 

365- January.

(I’ve decided to stop numbering my shared images for my 365 in anticipation of sharing less.)

From my first roll with the Olympus 35SP- my first rangefinder. Impressions? I am loving it.  I’m amazed at how different it feels compared to an SLR. It has a more fluid, less aggressive and almost meditative feel to it. 

To me that is one of the downfalls of the digital age. The cameras just don’t have the same character and individuality about them- they are all more or less the same- and in that sense you can’t connect with them in the same way. Each of my film cameras seems to have their own unique personality which I feel becomes part of the creative process. 

22/365- Sometimes the dishes pile up.

It’s been of a month of shooting film every day and I’ve learned a few things. 

1. My nikkormat is not the right camera for this project, so therefore I’ve starting using an Olympus rangefinder and find it suits me perfectly. 

2. This is as much about the developing and experimenting as it is about the picture making. 

3. Driving everywhere and being in a rush is not good for picture making. Therefore I have started walking more. 

4. There are days when I really don’t want to make a picture. But these can sometimes end up being the more revealing photographs. Or garbage. Either one.

5. I don’t do well just snapping this or that and not having a clear vision of what I’m trying to say through my images. So I’m starting to develop a vision for this project, the type of photographs I want to make and how to begin making it cohesive.

All of my other current projects involve going out into the world beyond myself and looking for something specific. But I’m finding this project much different.  Instead of going out to look for images, I am starting to look more into myself for them. The first few weeks I would try to make time each day to go look for photographs, but as time goes on I am realizing that there isn’t always time to look for photographs outside of your own experience every day. Because of this the images become very personal documents of your own life. 

I haven’t been very interested in this previously mostly because I saw my everyday surroundings as visually mundane, and considered photographs of my own life as ‘snapshots’ rather than real photography. However, I’m beginning to explore using my camera as a visual diary- trying to use imagery as a personal narrative, to convey my own thoughts, emotions and experiences through photographs. It’s going to be a huge challenge and uncomfortable at times, but I realize these are the best opportunities for growth as a photographer. 

We’ll see where it takes me… 11 more months to find out!