Creative Photography Techniques - Bottled Finnish Landscapes

Bottled Finnish Landscapes by Christoffer Relander: interesting and surrealistic pieces of art captured on film.

Read the article at thisiscolossal.com for detailed explanations and further examples. link

This effect is achieved by using double exposure technique.
The first shot is an exposure of the glass in front of an illuminated white background. Light is set up in a way that the glass area turns out underexposed or almost perfectly black while the illuminated background area is completely overexposed or burnt out.
In order to give the glass some plasticity and three dimensional look there need to be some reflections on the glass and shadows on the base ground.

The second exposure is in nature capturing a beautiful landscape and exposing the non or underexposed area of the glass. This second step implants the landscape into the glass.

The effect is gorgeous.

I am wondering if this can be done on digital too.
Technically there should be no issue. So, let's go out and try it.









Watch the documentary on how it is done:

Raising Interest in Analog Photography

A recent survey around analog photography shows interesting conclusions.

More than 50% of analog photographers expose more than 50 films per year.

More than 60% of film photographers are photographers for a long time.
Interestingly, 7% are newbies in photography.

The ambitious analog photographer self develops his films.

When it comes to develop prints on paper still 47% are following the complete analog process.

A majority of analog photographers prefers black and white film.

Kodak Ektar 100 Film Review - I Still Shoot Film Blog

For film lovers: read the Kodak Ektar 100 film review at I Still Shoot Film: link

Motion Picture - Super 8 Camera

I am all set to expose my first roll of Super 8 using my grand fathers more than 40 years old camera. It is exciting to get back to old technology.

So far I could not find a decent manual for the camera I have.

Using old gear sometimes needs some explanation.
Here a "How to use a Super 8 Camera"

A Documentary About Film Photography

Brothers Wright - no not the inventors of the airplane, but founders of CineStillFilm - are running a business bringing classic motion picture film to still photography format.
Watch the interview on their philosophy, motivation and vision.

Selecting the right film

I was not aware that Jared Polin - Fro Knows Photo - was running a film photography project.

All About Film - Documentary on film photography

Viral Nature Photo Challenge

I've been nominated by Joseph John Pucadyil to participate in a 7 day nature photo challenge. I need to post one photo a day for 7 days and nominate one person each day to pass this along so we can flood FB with great photos of nature.

If you want to click you through the hyperlinked paths of this viral game, and if you want to know how far it did go, find here the link to my very first post: Day 1: Cherry Blossom

I decided to share a series of pictures taken using my old Hasselblad 500 c/m camera on film.

Here is the stream of photographs I've been sharing during subsequent days.

Why Analog Photography (Still) Rocks! - Digital Photography School

Why Analog Photography (Still) Rocks! - Digital Photography School

Red Poppy - Medium Format Photography

Here to share one of my medium format, 6x6 cm Fujichrome Velvia 50 film photographs.

A beautiful field with flowers of red poppy back lit in the evening sun.

The image was captured using a Hasselblad 500 c/m camera with a 80 mm f2.8 Planar T* lens, both from 1976.

Film Photography - Adding Value to a Photography Business

Currently photography business is struggling. With digital technology becoming available at almost no cost to everybody the value of images has been constantly decreasing.

What do creatives do in order to increase the value of their work? - What can be done in order to value the artistic and creative part in photography?

Read the following article about Charlie Kingsland-Barrow and how learning to shoot film transformed her photography business completely. - "How Film Photography Will Transform Your Business"

What are the main messages:
- It enables to increase prices: Since with film one is entering a niche, and film photography has a different value proposition than the commonly used digital photography, one is not competing with the cheap mass of photography services any more.

- It gives a unique style: With unpredictability and less flexibility in postproduction film photography is more style defining than digital. The selection of the film, and the photographers own preference in evaluating the right exposure gives unique style. Not being in constant reactive trial and error mode, but having to decide for an exposure and seeing the result at a stage where no new picture can be taken adds character to the photographers style.

- If frees up time: The amount of editing required becomes much lower if a good quality film lab is used. The work happens again on the scene when shooting.

Film Photography Communities

What I notice in recent times, and it has been confirmed by recent research, is that film photography is getting more popular again.
Interesting is that most of todays film photographers are younger than 35 even though this generation grew up with digital technology.
See the post at petapixel.com.

Is it a global trend that analog photography will gain importance again?
Similar than the watch industry, where with the introduction of quartz watches mechanical watches were losing popularity and then became a high value product.
Will we at some point (re-)value handcraft, manual artistic skills over flexibility, speed, ease of use?

Just performing a quick search on Facebook already gives a good overview on analog photography communities:

Just to mention a couple of examples...

Film Photography Podcast (Internet Radio Show)

Facebook page by FilmPhotographyProject.com

Film's not Dead

Let's shoot slide film again

Ferrenia Community

Creative Film Photography





and many more...

dear readers, feel free to enrich the collection by posting in the comment field!

Iconic film - Kodak Tri-X

Kodak Tri-X: The best black-and-white film ever made? - Read the blog post Zorki Dowling at https://zorkiphoto.co.uk/2016/04/03/kodak-tri-x-film-photography/

Kodak Tri-X came out in 1940 as large format film. In 1954 it was release for 35mm and 120.

The film is on the market for more than 70 years and still widely used today.

Flickr even features a "Kodak Tri-X" group with images shot using this classic film.

Entering film photography

A recent blog post by David Hayek on http://theodysseyonline.com is dealing with the question "Why You Should Seriously Try Film Photography?".

"But film photography is different. It's careful, thoughtful, and genuine; not rushed, mindless, or fake."

Hayek elaborates on the key characteristics of film photography:

- Film photography requires time and attention

- That photo is something you saw, something you decided exactly when to capture, and something you carefully created all on your own.

It is an art driven by understanding of capturing light, understanding of exposure, understanding of image composition, and understanding of the photographic film development process.
It is about true craftsmanship.

Nevertheless, modern digital photography gives many more possibility to the ambitious photographer. Going through the school of film photography handcraft gives the digital photographer the skills to invest time and energy on the parts of the photographic process adding the most value to the quality of a final image through being more determined on that one excellent and not only good image.

The Film Romance

Film photography already became extinct. Digital technology was so much opening up new technical possibilities in photography and imaging. - But why then in recent times analog film photography is gaining more and more importance again? - "Compared to digital, film is a labor of love."

Read the blog post by Jay Goodrich:
The Film Romance

Film photography makes a comeback

Film photography seems to get more and more popular again. Not only in the streets of big cities one can see more mainly young photographers shooting film again, but also in sales figures of film producers and the sales of second hand used cameras.

It is seen that especially digital natives become interested in film photography. As described in the blog post by Lucy Battersby on The Age, young people pick up the old cameras of their parents and try out if they still work. They are fascinated by the manual, mechanical handcraft and want to learn more about the photographic techniques of last century.

Read the full blog post at: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/film-photography-makes-a-comeback-20160225-gn3edc.html#ixzz41h4V9tt6

Photographers shooting film

In today's world of digital media; how many professional photographers who do shoot film on a regular basis are there?

A post from the "IStillShootFilm" blog portraits 10 professional photographers who still shoot film:

http://istillshootfilm.org/post/110901745797/10-professional-photographers-who-still-shoot-film

Hasselblad photography - view through the view finder

Since I started #myhasselbladproject exploring analog photography using my 1976 Hasselblad 500 c/m camera, I collected images from Hasselblad cameras - mainly images showing the view through the view finder - at pinterest (All around Hasselblad medium format analog photography).

Below my Hasselblad pinterest board:

Making analog film

Have you ever wondered how black and white film is being made. Watch this video from the Ilford factory.

While some of the classic film are still manufactured niche manufacturers are producing special unique film.

A recent project is CineStill Film which brings motion picture film to the still photography format.

While a couple of 35 mm film are available CineStill is missing 120 medium format film. In order to do so CineStill Film is running a crowd funding campaign to raise capital for the production of respective medium format roll film.

If you are interested in medium format film photography become a contributor to back CineStill's film production. Many already invested. So did I. Help to make this rolls of film available.
#CineStill120

Using expired film

Ilford Sportsman, Kodak 200 ASA film

My recent analog photography revival started with a very experimental setting. - The 1959 Ilford Sportsman range finder camera using a more than 10 years expired Kodak 200 ASA film.

For both camera and film I did not know what the results would be. As a result, only a handful of the 24 images were well exposed, sharp and useable. For some of the exposures the leaf shutter of the camera did not work properly.

But overall the visual performance was very satisfying.


2014 June - Kodak 200 ASA - Images by Andreas Mueller

For some more tips on shooting old film read the post from the "I Still Shoot Film" photography blog.

http://istillshootfilm.org/post/118025728220/5-tips-for-shooting-with-expired-film