The Hassy
On several of my recent promo shoots I have consulted Houston’s resident film expert, Marc Brubaker, and he has either generously loaned me some of his excellent vintage camera gear or acted as my (actual) assistant on the shoot (loading film, changing backs, generally knowing more than the photographer). Now, I started out shooting film. My first band shoot was on a Canon AE-1. I shot for my university yearly with a Nikon N90s (because I read that it was the #1 backup camera of National Geographic photographers. wow, that’s lame.) For whatever reason, after my first digital, I have almost moved completely away from using film. Recently, however, I have begun the process of incorporating film back into some of my photography work. I started with a Holga (who doesn’t have one?) until I was feeling comfortable again. Then I began working some polaroid images into a few recent label gigs. I then added Marc’s Hasselblad into my camera lineup on the last two shoots. I can’t explain it. It hasn’t felt premeditated. I am just really falling (back) in love with shooting film. I found an old 500c/m on craigslist and am off to the races. I like the way that I shoot when I am shooting a film camera. I am much more methodical, much more intentional, much more selective…
Ok, an analogy. Have you ever seen that barrel-chested, no-neck, bulging-arms guy at the gym who somehow hasn’t realized that is walking around on little scrawny chicken legs? In college, we would always roll our eyes and say to each other, “curls for girls” (clearly his intended audience). I always just want to gently point out that his upper body is at least three sizes too large for his lower body, but, well, he has gigantic biceps which I can only assume he is looking to use.
Sometimes, I feel that as digital photographers we can end up walking around with big arms and scrawny chicken legs. Now I am not knocking digital. I make most of my living (audio/photo/video) digitally. I record music digitally, I shoot digital images, and I shoot digital video. If anything, digital has opened the door for me to simply create. It lowers the single largest barrier to entry (cost) and lets us work out our ideas in ways that in decades past, only the big boys could try. I don’t believe that digital is lesser than analog, but rather, presents unique advantages and disadvantages (that we need to recognize).
Let’s try another analogy.
Most of us are familiar with the RGB color space because of Photoshop. Not to get too bogged down in color theory, but colors are built on the three primary colors RED, GREEN, and BLUE. The RGB color space is called “Additive Color” because it emits light (CMYK reflects light). Adding values (0-255) of each of the primary colors creates secondary colors, tertiary colors, and all of the tones of grey.
In the Venn diagram above the secondary/tertiary/etc colors are created as the spheres of RGB overlap in varying combinations/locations… So each color is some combination of R-G-B and rarely (excluding grey tones) of equal parts. I love this concept. It is pretty straightforward and simple and easy to visualize.
Well, I had a friend describe the components of any media production in a similar fashion and it really struck a chord. He said that all productions are made of three components: Quality, Time (Ease/Speed), and Cost (Budget).
We might imagine it looking something like this:
On any given project, the goal is to somehow balance the three competing components and create work that is of the highest quality, at a reasonable price (for the client), in the quickest amount of time. Pure white. R:255, G:255, B:255
The reality of creating work with finite resources, however, can be tricky at best. A friend who is a theater producer often describes the production process in a slightly vulgar way; ”A client will always want something that is good, fast, and cheap. Well I always say…pick two. Life won’t let you get all three.” We are all aiming for pure white, but we often have to settle for some combination of the three. Often that means that we are leaning a little heavier in one or two of the directions. Think about it: if someone comes to you and says, “oh man, we had this guy lined up, but he backed out and our record goes to press in a week, think you can swing a photoshoot tomorrow?” That is already leaning pretty heavily in the fast direction. So, most likely, it is going to be pretty expensive for them to get a great photoshoot in 24 hours. Or it is going to be reasonably priced, but under circumstances that make it difficult to get your best work (mostly for reasons beyond your control - limited prep/planning, limited budget, etc…) You can re-arrange the details in a given scenario but it seems that this tends to ring true…
Well, let’s take it one step further and use the Venn diagram above to think about photographic tools (digital vs. film). In this illustration, I would say that digital tends, on average, to fall more towards the aquamarine (fast/inexpensive) while film generally falls towards red-ish… Film’s strengths clearly lie in the quality. Digital still is having difficulty keeping up with performance in dynamic range, tonality, “smoothness”, and even resolution (in all but the highest end medium format digital backs). But, film costs money, film has to be developed, film cannot keep up with digital’s speed and delivery capabilities. Theoretically digital costs less than film (although free shutter clicks may not make up for the need to consistently replace digital camera bodies). Regardless, digital doesn’t cost as much to operate during a shoot. That is for sure.
If balance is what we are going for (it was what I am going for), then it seems counter-productive to spend all your time focusing on one particular way of seeing/shooting.
Maybe that is really just a long winded way of saying that I think that shooting film, for me, is another particularly great way to practice. It is an opportunity to balance a bit, to see things a little differently, to be constantly smoothing out the rough edges, and ultimately is part of the (long) process of refining my ability to communicate through visual media.
So, all that to say, here is a rough scan of the first image to come out of the 500c/m and a few polaroids from a LAND:
