Sunday, May 18, 2014

Photographer captures life's little details

Artist waiting for big hit

By Leila Rodriguez
lrodriguez@chicoer.com @leilarrodriguez on Twitter

Posted: 05/17/2014 04:12:12 PM PDT

"The Mariachi's Sombrero" by Karen Kolb. (Karen Kolb — Contributed Photo)

Chico >> Chico photographer Karen Kolb is still waiting for her hit: A single image to hit platinum, get the photographer recognized and pay for more photo paper.
"Photographs and visual art, its like music," she said. "It's intellectual property. The way you make money that way is you get a hit. If one photo becomes popular and people buy it over and over, you make bank."
Kolb's soon-to-be-hits can be previewed in "Seeing Things: Observations of the Overlooked," currently on display at the Chico Sports Club cafe, 260 Cohasset Road.
"That song kept coming into my head from the 'Sound of Music,'" Kolb said. " 'these are a few of my favorite things.' So I just wanted to show some stuff I've never shown before."
Her lens zooms on a basket of fruit at the farmers market illuminating plump berries, a train cart with streaks of rain and hoods of rusted cars are a few of Kolb's subjects in the show.
"There's a lot of manipulation you can do without being a technical wizard," she said. "I mean just by looking to where it lies in front, you are capturing light."
Kolb's images display vibrant details alluding to the objects' true magnitude and she believes her images aren't ready to be seen unless they're fully dressed in a fancy frame.
"There's only a very few (photos) that actually get to grow up and be in a frame out of the thousands of times you click a button," she said.
Kolb is best noted for her Chico snow series. With just three rolls of film clanking in her coat, Kolb set out with a friend to explore the winter wonderland in 1988.
Serene photos of Bidwell Mansion cloaked in fluffy white powder gives the Bidwell house a wintery veil many have never experienced.
The photos are spectacular and seeing Chico covered in snow evokes a certain camouflaged charm.
Kolb lives by the motto, "shoot it where you can find it" because she doesn't have a studio at the moment and her canvas is anything she walks by during her day.
"I shoot more off-the-cuff," Kolb said."I love taking pictures and I took some good ones in the band but I didn't ever think I'd ever go this far."
Her first gig with photography began in the '80s.
Kolb fronted '80s cover band Up, Down, Strange and when the band — living on a budget — needed promo photos, she stepped in. She'd set up the frame, timer and then run into the shot.
"Back then a sweet mullet was a fine, fine thing to have," she said skimming through her early black and white film photos of Up, Down, Strange.
Kolb has since traded in film photography for digital and the mullet for a modern pixie cut.
She found a common artistic comfort in photography as she did with performing but she said there's always a struggle when being an artist.
"It's hard to get people's attention long enough to hear a song," Kolb said. "But you can see something faster. It'll catch your eye and you can grab people's attention that way."
Close up photography is Kolb's subtle and artistic way to get viewers to slow down and admire the detail they speed by.
"Everybody's so busy now. Who has time to notice anything?" she said. "Who has time to get milk on the way home? Everybody's just so busy now. Society just demands it of you."
With a skewed view, the image lacks a sense of scale offering viewers a varied view to something like flashing lights on a carousel.
"All I need is a hit photo, if not I'm trying out for 'The Voice.' I give up," she said with a laugh.
"Seeing Things" ends Friday.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Visual artistry in a moody urban landscape

Vantage point: David Stephenson’s camera captures a unique view of cities in Light Cities/Asia.

David Stephenson, Light cities / Asia, John Buckley Gallery, 114 Bendigo St, until May 24

Susan Long, Start, Sutton Projects 230 Young St, until May 31

Jessie Scott, The Coburg Plan, blindside.org.au/play

A bit like a landscape painter in search of the picturesque, David Stephenson climbs to the highest eminence to make his images of foreign cities by night. Called Light cities / Asia, the photographs at John Buckley are taken from tall buildings, looking across at other skyscrapers and the web of roads and topography that surround them.

Shanghai, Hong Kong and Bangkok become translucent, radiant in their humid smog, as if the leaden air is set alight by an excess of energy. From its unusual vantage-point, the camera seems to register an aerial radioactivity, a sinister incendiary that is perhaps nothing more than the output of so many power generators that supply ubiquitous appliances.

Now that I’ve seen these pictures, I notice the aura of consumption everywhere. Even the page that I’m writing on glows like Shanghai. It’s the electrical campfire of the information age, which is in fact relatively efficient for the billions of people it connects.

From Turner to pictorialist photography, artists have enjoyed the ominous visual condiment of pollution; but in implicating the electrical luminaries in the haze, Stephenson takes us to the larger cycle of choice and production that underlies the emissions.

The pictures are monumental, documenting the urban sublime, which is both seductive and terrifying. They’re made with chemical photography, which is obsolete, given that the prints are in any case produced digitally.

Just as the cities of the advanced economies are now towers of information rather than a sprawl of manufacture, so the photograph is on its way to becoming a matrix of data. Stephenson still holds out against the digital; but he too will succumb, in the same way that cities tend toward a raster upon a river.

The survival of film is more than a matter of sentiment for Susan Long in her Start at Sutton Projects. All the big cities of the world have libraries with holdings of information in microform. The film compresses text and image in a denser form than paper.
Long prints out the beginnings and ends of the reels that she’s encountered. They're the odds and sods in all their analogue messiness, which is coincidentally moody, having the appearance of night, where random scratches on the film resemble the trace of light in photography with long exposures.
At other times, they look uncannily like an abstract artwork, with a suggestion of concrete poetry in the printed words designating the start and end of film. Film may be outdated; but before its end, digitised replacements had begun.
Digitisation ultimately transcends the gallery itself, as more organisations, like C3, have excellent screen initiatives online. An example is Jessie Scott’s video The Coburg Plan at Blindside, which you can view at home but not in the gallery.
The four-minute video is made from archival 35mm slides, which appear with the sound of an old automatic projector. But Scott has exaggerated the delay between one slide going down and the next appearing, giving long periods of black that make the experience tense and portentous.
The slides document the northern working-class suburb of Coburg, now perhaps the next up-and-coming part of Melbourne but which struggles to create a sense of urbanism against its bleak horizons of boundless bungalows on bald allotments.
David Stephenson would die in Coburg. Anyone from our town who visits Hong Kong may well return through automotive Coburg and wonder just how much longer the horizontal aesthetic can hold out against a more efficient footprint.
Spookily, Scott takes her transparencies from the recent past, where the cars are sometimes only 10 years old. The vignetted image and dowdy subject matter look ancient, but in fact they’re close to the present. With long, melancholy periods of black and relatively short glimpses of suburb, Scott makes the present seem dead on arrival.
Each image seems morbid, with its own funeral in the dark movement of the slide projector. In that black interval, you wonder if maybe on the other side lies a brilliant metropolis of a kind that Stephenson would want to photograph.

Renaissance Woman

Never stop learning.

Film Photography

by philosofishcomics

I’ve talked about photography before. I saved up bought myself a digital camera when I was in middle school. When we went to Yosemite I pretended I was Ansel Adams. I really love photography, but I’ve never taken a class in it before.
This semester, I enrolled in a photography class just to bring myself up to 12 credit hours so I would qualify as a full-time student. The class came recommended, and I was super excited to finally learn about the only form of visual art I’m any good at. Even better, this was a class in black and white film photography. What could be classier?
This class is quickly becoming one of my most difficult. Art is inherently tough because you never know how someone else will react to your work. In my engineering courses, I can usually tell when I have the right answer. Art scoffs at the very idea of the right answer. And even if I knew what the right answer looked like, it takes a very long time between when I take an exposure and the point where I know what my print is going to look like. It’s really frustrating compared to the instant gratification of digital photography. But I’m loving the process so far.
So far I’ve only taken pictures. The process is mostly the same as what I’m used to, with a few changes. In digital photography, I used to set the camera in manual mode and fiddle with the settings until I got the exposure I liked. With film, I lost the luxury of checking my work. I had to start trusting my light meter, the built-in device that basically measures the amount of light coming in through the lens and determines whether the picture will be over or underexposed with the current settings. That exposure can change depending on what film is loaded, but luckily the camera I’m using is smart enough to read the film speed and adjust for it automatically. Otherwise I’d need to do even more mental math.
Can’t wait to see how these pictures turn out!

Film Workshops: Shooting & Developing with Film & Projects in the Darkroom, Edmonton

Alberta, Courses & Workshops, DISCIPLINES, EVENTS, Photography,

Shooting and Developing with Film
Create beautiful photographs by learning the principles of shooting with B & W film and processing in the darkroom. Learn light, exposure, and composition on photo shoots in urban street locations. Learn how to process film, make contact sheets and print images using traditional darkroom techniques. Film cameras available for student use. Instructor: C. Makowichuk, $195 + $10 material fee + GST, supplies included, enrolment is limited

4 Wed., May 28-Jun 18, 6:30-9:30
Independent Projects in the Darkroom
This darkroom course is an opportunity to pursue independent projects in B & W film photography under the direction of an experienced instructor. Processing and printing facilities are available along with access to critical, technical and aesthetic guidance in shooting, project development and printing. Proctored darkroom access is alternated with instruction for maximum access to darkroom facilities. Film cameras available. Previous darkroom experience required. Instructor: C. Makowichuk, $230 + $10 material fee + GST, supplies included. Enrolment is limited.

May 31‑Jun 24
4 Sat, 1:30‑4:30 pm (instruction) and 4 Tues, 6:30‑9:30 pm (proctor)
NEW! Analogue Photography Package
This course enrolls students in both Shooting and Developing with Film and Independent Projects in the Darkroom for one special package price. Instructor: C. Makowichuk, $395+ $20 materials fee + GST, supplies included. Enrolment is limited.
Information | Call 780-497-4301 or email shantzd3@macewan.ca.
Enrolment | Call 780-497-5000, visit any Information Centre, or enroll online.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Free Computer Wallpapers

For those of you who may be new to my blog...thanks for stopping by. Below is a link to a short video displaying some of the free computer wallpapers found here. Like the articles, the wallpapers are also free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQgYo_lkzis

To see the entire collection of Wallpapers, look to the right of this post, and scroll down the page until you see "2010", left click on it and you'll be taken to that section of the blog containing the wallpapers. To see all of my videos related to photography you can visit Youtube.com and search for "DarrylmrT" Click on it and see how I buy 35mm cameras for as little as $5 on ebay. Thanks for stopping by. Until next time...happy shutterbugging.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Digital Vs Film Photography

Digital vs Film Photography: I used to think that Digital Cameras are much better than their old Film cameras counterparts. But Truth can be stranger than Fiction!

We all love clicking Pictures and now-a-days we often click these on a digital camera / Smartphone. Digital Photography is all about converting light in to electric signals. While there are a lot of factors which determines the quality of an image. I chose three of them which are triangle of image exposure!

Aperture: It is basically the opening/hole in camera lens which allows the flow of light. It determines how much light will pass through lens. The larger the aperture the more light that gets in – the smaller the hole the less light.

Shutter: It controls the time frame for which light will be allowed to pass from Camera lens to image sensor. When light is bright, shutter will be open for a very short time. And when the scene is dark, shutter will be open for a long time.

ISO: It is the sensitivity of camera's sensor to light. If ISO is lower your camera will be less sensitive to light and if it's higher the sensor will be much more sensitive to light. In daylight shots ISO shall be low while in night it shall be high!

Film camera has a much better overall image quality which current average digital cameras can't match.

1. The sensor size of Film cameras is quite large, so they capture a lot more detail than digital cameras. Film cameras used a 35 mm format which is much bigger than current crop of digital cameras.

2. The quality of lenses (for film cameras) used to be excellent. After so many years of refinement, the lenses became their best assets. Although our digital cameras are coping up but they have yet to achieve the perfection of film cameras.

3. The resolution of film surpasses average digital cameras. Film cameras had around 25 megapixels of resolution. So the quality of photos is excellent!

And we all are happy while shooting through a 8 MP camera/smartphone!! Please note that the most common size of average consumer digital camera is 1/2.3".
Film cameras were excellent at photography and their level is yet to be matched by Digital cameras. Although we are covering the gap swiftly!
Hope the basics of image exposure are clear!

Source: http://www.shvoong.com/internet-and-technologies/computers/2418742-digital-vs-film-photography/#ixzz31ZTMxn4e

Where to buy camera film for cheap?

I love my film camera, but film photography is a pretty expensive hobby. Is there anywhere online that I can buy cheap film, maybe even cheap film in bulk?
Do you also have any suggestions for developing film inexpensively? Thank you!

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If cheap is your number one priority, I just don't think you will do any better than Walmart. You might want to try stores like Dollar General or Walgreens and buy their branded film. It may be a little cheaper than Kodak or Fuji from Walmart. It is all C41 color process anyway, so it makes little difference what name is on the box. Be aware, I have heard that Walmart no longer returns your negatives if you have film processed there, which to me is asinine. There are other low price places for processing though, Sams, Costco, Walgreens.

I very much doubt you are going to find anyplace online with any cheaper prices, especially when you factor in shipping costs.

steve

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Here is a link to a lot of different brands of 35 mm film.

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/c1100-Colo...

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/c40-Black-...

When I shoot black and white film, I develop it myself and then when dry, scan it using my Epson V500 scanner.

When I shoot color film, I have the lab develop only (no prints) and again, scan them using my scanner

Source(s):

proFotog

From: Yahoo Answers

How To: Start a Vintage Polaroid Camera Collection

A crash course in building your own instant camera collection

By Erik Karstan Smith

Even if you didn’t grow up in the ’70s, you’re likely familiar with the Polaroid cameras that spit film out the front and, like magic, developed an image before your eyes. Polaroid provided instant gratification for the photographer and subject and because of The Impossible Project, the Polaroid FotoLab and the newly opened Polaroid Museum in Las Vegas, a new generation is discovering the joys of instant photography.

When I heard The Impossible Project was resurrecting instant film for Dr. Land’s instant camera I decided to open the Dr. Frankenroid eBay store. I wanted to educate people—who might just be discovering the joys of instant photography—about the use, value and variety of these old cameras.

I started seriously collecting in 2008, the same year I opened my store. I currently own over 100 rare cameras and accessories. Dr. Frankenroid is technically an eBay store, but it’s also an online museum of Polaroid cameras and ephemera that allows people to see the variety and valuation of these cameras with their accessories in entire kits. Many of the most rare items in my store are actually priced to 'not sell'.

Polaroid produced millions of cameras around the world, but only a fraction of them have any real monetary value. However, a careful eye at a garage sale or local Goodwill can turn a small investment into a tidy return. I’ve met many people who have found box style 600 cameras (more on that later) at a garage sale or thrift store for $10 that ended up being worth hundreds.

Be Realistic About Your Budget

Polaroid collecting as a hobby can be very expensive. It’s hard to say how much I’ve spent collecting over the past eight years. My advice to new collectors is to keep it simple. You can have a nice display of common cameras for $1000 and have a lot more fun with those than with a more expensive collection that you’re afraid to use. The Land List by Martin Kuhn is a great free resource and way to really do your homework before you dive in. Consider this a crash course in Polaroid camera collecting.

Condition Matters

Having a mint condition camera with the box and original documentation will always increase its value, but a camera in any condition will always be more valuable than a damaged one. If the camera is broken or untested, it will probably cost more for a repair than to just purchase another camera. Non-working cameras can be desireable to interior designers or other people just looking for a decoration, though, so a particularly pretty or interesting-looking Polaroid camera can still have value if you know who wants it.

Get to Know the Camera Types

There are three basic categories of Polaroid cameras: roll film cameras, pack film cameras and integral film cameras. Within each of these categories there are a variety of valuable models and prototypes.

The Model One Hundred is one of the most rare cameras and typically costs at least $1000.

Roll Film Cameras: These are the first instant cameras produced by Polaroid, but film was discontinued in the ’70s and for the most part they are obsolete. The Model One Hundred is the rarest of the roll film cameras, but is very difficult to find. I wouldn’t sell mine for under $1000 There are artisans who professionally convert these beautiful old cameras to use modern integral film and Fuji pack film. I suggest Jason at Wolf-Industry or Nate at Option8. My favorite cameras for conversion are the 110a, 110b, 120 and 900 electric eye, these range in price starting at $500 for a 900 Electric Eye to $1500 for a 120.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Photographers in the World War II

A look back 70 years! Here's a collection of rare colour photographs of photographers during the Second World War. The creators of the reality portrayed immortalize themselves, but today all grandparents always young in the memories of the negative.

An Army Signal Corps photographer perches atop a pile of rubble to film the battle for Normandy in June 1944.

U.S. Marine Corps original combat cameraman

Army photographer.

Serial photographer poses for ground photographer before boarding plane for mission.

Sgt. handing oblique camera to serial photographer for mission on a North American C-47A.

Sgt. installs a K-25 camera in a Bell P-39.

General view of Type A-2 photo trailer.

First man to obtain invasion day photographs is cameraman Captain Dale E. Bikinis, shown with his specially constructed camera.

Combat cameraman has been in the ETO 27 months. He uses an old shattered German pillbox for protection while photographing the war action.

A WAC Sergeant makes a shot with a flash camera while in training.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Revenge of the Polaroid: How instant film captured a new generation

It's an analog technology that never really went away. Now Fujifilm is hoping a wifi-enabled instant film printer will bridge the Instagram gap.

Avril Lavigne uses an Instax camera in her new video for "Hello Kitty."

Porter Hovey and her artsy New York friends are lounging on a rooftop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, giddy to be outdoors. It’s spring’s first breath, and the gang passes around a camera to capture the moment in a way once thought extinct: Polaroids.

Well, not exactly. They’re using a Fujifilm Instax camera, one of the few remaining methods to capture the warm-edged, dreamlike quality of shoot-and-print photos ever since Polaroid closed its last instant film factory in 2008.

“It’s nostalgia,” said Hovey, 30, who remembers her parents snapping Polaroids of her growing up in Nebraska in the 1980s. “Holding a photo in your hands is something you just don’t do now . . . there is just no replacing that with Instagram.”

Only now, that nostalgia has come full circle. While Instagram became a hit by offering vintage filters for your smartphone photos, now you can develop those fake-vintage snapshots on instant film stock. Fujifilm’s Instax Share SP-1 printer started appearing on Canadian store shelves this past week. The wifi-enabled miniature device connects to your smartphone to develop credit card-sized prints from your photo stream.

Fujifilm is betting on the printer as a new way to cash in on instant film’s resurgence, led by a growing wave of enthusiasts such as Hovey and her friends. The analog art has been kept afloat by Fuji and Impossible, a German company that took over Polaroid’s shuttered film factory in the Netherlands. The two companies remain the world’s lone distributors of instant cameras and film.

But why invest in the retro art when user-friendly digital photography has eclipsed film?

“It was pretty simple,” explains Creed O’Hanlon, CEO of Impossible. “There are still 200 million Polaroid cameras in the world, all of which were rendered useless by the withdrawal of the factory.”

Impossible, which took its name from the far-fetched dream of keeping instant film alive, is now the sole company manufacturing film for Polaroid’s discontinued lines of 600, SX-70 and Spectra cameras. They also refurbish about 35,000 of the cameras each year, buying them from flea markets and eBay and reselling them for US$150 to $460. The film is equally pricey; eight exposures cost $23.49.

Still, the trend seems to be catching. Impossible sold 1.2 million units of film in 2013, up from 600,000 in 2012. It’s especially popular in France and Australia with a growing market in Canada.

“Tens of thousands of films over the last three months have been heading into Canada,” O’Hanlon said. “Canadians, like Americans, are beginning to discover it.”

Many of those buyers are young, O’Hanlon said, especially since the company started selling cameras and film in North American Urban Outfitters stores.

“For a younger generation who never understood the frustration of waiting a week for film to develop, it’s akin to magic,” he said.

Still, the company has a bit of an identity problem. When someone is handed an Impossible photo, they usually say, “Oh wow, a Polaroid!” O’Hanlon says.

“We call them ‘Impossibles,’” he corrected.

Fujifilm’s cameras are markedly different. Its film only works with Fuji’s own line of Instax cameras, which have been around for more than a decade, long before Polaroid shut down its film factory.

However, Fuji felt a spike in sales in the past two years, especially among teen girls and those between 18 and 30. The colourful plastic cameras (retailing at $80 to $100) seem tailored for that demographic, with sly product placement in current music videos by Lily Allen and Avril Lavigne. Recently, Fujifilm introduced the more serious-looking Neo Classic model, with “advanced” features and a higher price tag (about $180), aimed at an older audience.

“Polaroid leaving the market has left some business on the table,” said Paul Woodall, the director of sales and marketing for Fuji Canada.

The cameras became such a hit that Polaroid decided to re-enter the instant film game in 2010 by partnering with Fujifilm to launch its Polaroid Pic300 camera. The camera was essentially a rebranded version of Fujifilm’s Instax 7S, with a few minor design adjustments.

Still, instant film remains a novelty item, and we’re not about to give up the convenience of our smartphone lenses. Which is where Fujifilm’s Instax Share printer comes in.

The new device even comes with its own Instagram-like Android and iOS apps that allow users to snap their own masterpieces and apply filters. It retails for $200, plus about $10 for 10 sheets of Instax film.

The Star tested the inkless printer, which is surprisingly quick. It took 10 seconds for it to spit out a photo, which fully developed in about one minute.

As for the app, it’s a little limited. Users can only choose from two filters, black-and-white and sepia, and a handful of seasonal frames, such as “Season’s Greetings” and “Happy Birthday.” It can be connected to a user’s Instagram and Facebook albums, unlocking the vast digital libraries.

Fuji is trying to market the product as a staple for big social events.

“The app allows multiple people to use the printer at once, which is ideal for parties,” Woodall explained. “If you want to get behind the scenes at a wedding . . . you could have everyone print them out and put them in a book as their keepsake.”

But in Porter Hovey’s eyes, the gap between the online world and instant photography is part of the appeal. A professional photographer herself, Hovey once used her Polaroid to snap a photo essay of Williamsburg.

“For some reason Polaroid film could capture the changes of the neighbourhood I lived in . . . that old-versus-new that I felt Williamsburg started to represent,” she said.

That past-versus-present theme came up again during the rooftop hangout as Hovey’s friends starting taking Instagram pictures of the Fuji instant photos. She couldn’t help but laugh.

“They were taking pictures of the pictures,” Hovey said. “It was the funniest thing.”

Northwest B.C.film festival seeks contributions

SkeenaWild is proud to announce that the 5th Annual SkeenaWild Film Festival (SWFF) is officially open for submissions from May 1st to September 15th, 2014.

This year marks a special milestone for the SkeenaWild Film Festival as we celebrate our 5th Year running! With over 500+ films and photos submitted over the past four years,

SWFF has become the largest home-grown film and photo festival of Northwestern BC and it just keeps getting better. In addition to our regular line-up of categories, this year features new categories for the ‘Best SmartPhone Pic or Video’, as well as, the sure to be hilarious ‘Funniest Skeena Story’.

Our region holds some of the most dramatic landscapes and compelling subjects.

This lends inspiration for all kinds of creative works. Feature and short-length films can be of any genre including documentary, action/adventure, comedy, animation, music video, etc. and SkeenaWild offers support to those who are interested in developing a submission for the festival from the use of our camera equipment to providing assistance during the editing process.

In addition to SWFF, SkeenaWild is also facilitating a five day Film Camp for youth ages 13-18 this summer.

Participants of the SkeenaWild Film Camp can expect to be immersed in all aspects of the filmmaking process including writing, directing, filming and editing while being led and mentored by local media and video professionals.

Dates of the Film Camp will be announced shortly with early-bird registration open and encouraged to ensure a space.

Film and photography is a field of considerable interest and SkeenaWild has consistently been at the forefront by producing compelling video that focuses on the conservation and protection of Wild Salmon and our ties to this resource, as well as, the facilitation of community engagement initiatives such as SWFF and the SkeenaWild Film Camp.

The result is a culmination of stories and moments that depict genuine care, connection, concern and passion for the Northwest region.

SkeenaWild Conservation Trust is a regionally based organization dedicated to the long-term health and resilience of the wild salmon ecosystem, while optimizing economic returns to First Nations and local communities. Its head office is in Terrace, B.C.

Black Photographers, Black History

by Merve Fejzula
Ten years in the making, Through A Lens Darkly was clearly worth the wait to the full crowd at the Montclair Film Festival on Saturday evening. Director Thomas Allen Harris attended the screening at the Clairidge Cinema on May 3 for the film’s New Jersey premiere.
Shola Lynch, curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and a filmmaker herself, provided an introduction for the film and moderated a Q&A session with the director afterwards. Lynch was well in a position to understand Harris: her film Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners screened at MFF last year.

Shola Lynch, Thomas Allen Harris, and Gregory Warren, Jr.
Photo by Frank Schramm / Montclair Film Festival

Harris briefly spoke before the screening, where he told the packed crowd of the ten-year journey the film has taken. Conversations with fellow artist and mentor Deborah Willis about her book Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present, originally sparked the idea for a film project. In histories of photography, black photographers were often omitted, something Willis has sought to rectify in her art and in her scholarship. Several photographers in the film also cited Willis’s work and support of the black photographer community.

Harris now calls the documentary that resulted from those initial beginnings more of a “cinematic essay.” The film has already begun the rounds of the festival circuit, having premiered at Sundance and been screened at the Berlin Film Festival. A wide theatrical release is expected on August 28.
Through the metaphor of the family album, Harris narrates the “essay” to probe difficult topics, particularly “what is missing” from black family albums. Exploring questions of gender, sexuality, race, family, and so much more, Through a Lens Darkly draws out the conflicted legacy of African Americans on film.
On the one hand, there are the stereotypical negative images that abounded in American media. On the other, a more sensitive picture that emerges in the interviews with black photographers and the pictures in family albums. Using his own personal family pictures and stories as a guide, Harris explores what he calls in his voice-over narration of the film, “the war of images within the American family album.”

Photo by Frank Schramm / Montclair Film Festival

During the lively Q&A after the film, Harris spoke about a parallel project that began as a result of working on the film. Expanding upon the notion of the “American family album,” Digital Diaspora Family Reunion: One World, One Family is a multimedia project that allows individuals to upload their family photos and share their stories online. The project has since grown to include numerous different platforms to showcase these incredible stories.
Telling one’s own story as a way to correct the historical record is something central to Harris’s work by his own admission. In addition to extensive visual art and multimedia work, he has long been a filmmaker. His previous films include É Minha Cara/That’s My Face (2001) and Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela (2005).
Lynch reiterated the importance of collecting and preserving family photographs in an age of only digital uploads. “If we don’t maintain our collections, we don’t exist,” she said. Harris agreed and added, these personal histories are “part of our national story.”

35mm Film Guide.

I get a lot of emails asking about the differences between certain brands of film, film speeds and which are better for which cameras but to be honest – the origins of 35mm consumer film are, to me, in murky waters. Color film production have ceased in several companies and although most brands are still for sale in the market, there has been a lot of re-branding going on so there’s no sure way of knowing what film I’m shooting with.

Having said that, I still think that a film guide would be useful for any other analogue enthusiast; every time before I try a new film, I like to check out samples on Flickr and blogs. Following my film camera guide, I do believe that a 35mm film guide is in order just so anyone who has half the mind to get into film photography has a clearer picture of what to expect. A few things to note about this guide:

1. This is by no means a professional guide.
I am an analog enthusiast, I do it for fun. I do not develop my own film and have absolutely no knowledge on how to do that. My films are sent to a local photo lab and basically, I just take whatever that’s given back to me. My thoughts and opinions of each film are based on how my photographs turn out under the professional processing skills of the lab people.

2. This is a guide based on preferences, not professional results.
Following the first point, there will be no discussion on how great the range of a particular film is, no talks about push or pull processing, no insistence on how grainless images are “the best”. As a film photography enthusiast, how good a film easily translates to how right it is for my needs.

3. Like I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of rebranding going on in different markets around the world so there is no sure way of knowing what film I’m shooting with.
One prime example: Lomography does not produce their own film so they basically rebrand other film stock to sell as their own. The origins of Lomography film is a topic widely discussed on the Internet but is generally inconclusive since it differs over time. Hence, all thoughts and opinions expressed here point back to what I’m being told on the film package box, not what they “actually are”.

4. Film performance is not always constant, depending on type of camera, lens, setttings and weather.
The results I have garnered are produced with the cameras I own, without flash, and may only act as a general gauge. I have picked a number of pictures that I personally feel are representative of the results I have had with each film.

5. All films on this list has been used at least twice on different occasions.
Generally, I find it hard to characterize any film that I’ve shot with only once. There is no way to know for sure if anything that turned out was not by accident so I’ve made it a point to only include films that I’ve shot at least two rolls of.

The films, in alphabetical order:

Name: Efiniti UXi Super 200 (markings along the negatives show that it is a Fujifilm emulsion)
Tones: blue with strong undertones of green
Personal best results when used: in overcast daylight or indoors with plenty of natural light

Name: Fujicolor Pro 160s (expired)
Tones: muted contrast with relatively true to life tones, underexposes easily due to expiration
Personal best results when used: outdoors under shade or indoors with plenty of natural light

Name: Kodak ColorPlus 200
Tones: none in particular, occasional tinges of red or yellow
Personal best results when used: in bright sunlight with slight overexposure or indoors with plenty of natural light

From: Curating Cuteness Blog
To view the entire film guide use this link - http://curatingcuteness.com/2013/05/35mm-film-guide/

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Mother's Day

For those of you who are forgetful, below are images of Mothers. Tomorrow is Mother's Day. Please feel free to email this page to friends and family as a polite reminder.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Preserving history through the art of film photography

By Andrew Collins, Chloe Papas

A group of photography enthusiasts have the answer, and are planning to preserve their photos by switching back to film photography.

"Almost every person you talk to will have a story to tell about how they lost their photos," says Albany Film Users Group member Bob Symon.
From corrupted hard drives, to lost camera cards and the expense of buying more memory, the problems with digital storage are endless.
"I can still hold up the negatives I took when I was a kid," says Bob. "Digital photos that I took ten years ago, I haven't got many. What I've got, I'm looking after now, but it's a very difficult thing to do."
Most members of the group own digital cameras, but all have recently made the switch back to manual film cameras.
"Something changes in your mind when you have the old cameras," explains Bob.
"Because most of us haven't got automatic on the cameras, we have to do everything manually, so we've got to set the lens, exposure and think about the whole concept of the photo. I think that's where the improvement is, that we actually get this feeling for the photo."
The group believes that, although technology has advanced considerably when it comes to photography, it's all too easy for consumers to buy a sophisticated piece of equipment and shoot completely on automatic - losing the connection with the art.
"We have to develop this feeling of being able to predict something, so that we can see it coming and can snap it right on the spot. So rather than taking 100 shots, we'll take two or three. And it's just developing this feeling of - got it!"
The group are meeting regularly to exchange skills and equipment, with one member even taking to a few cameras with an angle grinder to invent a hybrid 'frankencam.

DarrylT