The F word

Back to basics. Well sorta. Film seems old. Old fashion? Old look? Just too much hassle to fool with? Well, I’ve been admiring from afar for a looooong time. I just LOVE the rawness of it. The nostalgia of holding something truly ‘old’ just brings back good ol’, warm, fuzzy feelings. Have you looked at a photograph and feel, I mean really FEEEEL it. I get that with film. It simply has more meaning. It seems to evoke more emotions. It’s almost alive. Truly, it’s just beautiful.

Color or black and white … My heart and I smile. On the inside. So, I decided to play with film. I started with film many years ago. Taking pictures with simple automatic cameras that don’t required much brain work or skill. I was terrified of moving from the ‘auto’ mode to anything else. What is Av, S? Manual…. Yikes! And the looooong wait and the effort of dropping the rolls off at the local photo lab. Way too much work! Needless to say I never appreciated film. The images were ho hum. Lack of life and true emotions. But everything changed when Cat was born. I had a semi-automatic Olympus film camera then. It was the time when everyone was switching to digital and digital was cooool! I was still auto-ing away in the film Olympus.

I have since retired that Olympus. It was all I had at that time.. so easy to use and everything came out just perfect. Well, good enough. At that time. Then, came digital. I wasn’t the cool few. I was still stuck in AUTO mode. Well… the rest you know is history.

So, this time I gave an ol’ CONTAX G1 a try. Just for fun. I’ve heard great things about it..a rangefinder. Frankly I still have a hard time understanding what a rangefinder actually do. What is so special about it? Whatever it is, I have a lot to learn. Here is my first attempt at it.

The color is definitely more saturated that I’m used to. Since it’s only a 45mm, f2 lens, its bokeh is average. Beautiful though. By the way, the talented folks at Richards Photo Lab made it all happen behind the scenes. They are so incredibly helpful and treated me like I’m Jose Villa (hhahhhahaa… well maybe). I can’t thank them enough for ‘holding my hand’ through these FIRST STEPS. This image is straight from the RPLab. No photoshop involved. Shot at F2. CAT is here holding my purple/ raspberry hydrangeas from my garden. More FILM images to come : ))

{ xo }