Photography by MED

By: Maggie Red

Jan 21 2013

Tags: black and white film, film, film photography, film processing, old film, patience, photography, slow film, weekly photography

Category: Uncategorized

3 Comments

But I am expecting this to be a good thing.

I haven’t been on schedule with my weekly photos in part because I wanted to take some with my fancy new film camera. I’ve been very slow finishing the roll but finish it I did this weekend. Today, I’ll be running off to get the film processed and see how things go.

First, I know that this film is very old even though it has been well cared for, so I don’t know if or how it will all turn out!

Second, it is black and white film and I have never shot anything exclusively in black and white. When I’m shooting digital, I will often edit a photo to black and white later. However, I have never used the B&W shooting feature. You have to have a whole different mindset, knowing your photos are going to be monochrome.

Third, I didn’t want to be wasteful. Sure, I knew that this first roll was going to be full of a bunch of throwaways because I’m not all that familiar with film and the metering and so on and so forth. Still, I tried really hard to think about my shots, the composition, the light because I cannot fix these later. I cannot crop them; I cannot tweak the exposure, the contrast, the sharpness.

So, film is slow, but it is inevitably going to make me a better photographer because soon I will not settle for a mediocre shot and that’s exciting.