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:

Film Photography: Milk & Miel Blog

If you are interested in analog photography, then visit the milk&miel blog at http://milkandmiel.blogspot.ch.

Mel Dixon is sharing plenty of information on film photography.

Filmphotography - Cross processing film

The Rollei Corssbird film, cross processed, exhibits interesting contrast and color spectrum.

These landscape images have been taken on a bright sunny summer day.

This film is well suited for landscapes with different tones of green. Be it the light greenish water color of the Rhein river or the dark green color of the forest.

Looking at the sky in the shown images one gets a good impression on the contrast possibilities of this film. The white clouds are well textured and come out in really nice placicity.

Film Photography: Shooting Film in the Rocky Mountains

An episode by Stefan Lister on Shooting Film in the Rocky Mountains

Black and White Film: Kodak Tri-X

Kodak Tri-X is one both the best black and white films ever made: read the blog post on Zorki Photo: link

Cine Still Film - Motion Picture Film for Still Photography

CineStillFilm: "For the first time ever, motion picture cinema film is now available for standard 35mm still photography and processing!"

The film has special features such as ultra fine grain for maximum sharpness. It brings some of cinematographic glamour to your still photography.

I bought some of this film. For what occasion should I expose these rolls? - I am still indecisive. 

Further more I am waiting for the 120 medium format versions to come out. CineStill is still fundraising at indiegogo.com.

Film Photography - Shoot Film!

Ted Forbes advocating for going out and shooting film...

Film Photography - The Local Landscape

Film photography is one of my passions. Taking pictures and not knowing the result immediately.

A recent series shows grain fields in the local area. Images have been taken using a Hasselblad 500 cm camera with 80mm f2.8 T* Planar lens on Ilford HP5 film.

The two images shown below feature the texture and pattern of local agriculture. A scenery which especially comes out in black and white. The grain of HP5 film gives another texture to these images.

Film Photography Crash Course

Read another blog post around film photography at photographyconcentrate.com.

Rob Lim compiled a nice article on film photography: Film Photography Crash Course

Rob Lim names main motivators for shooting film to be:

- The look of film
- The process of shooting film
- Helps you learn photography

One interesting reference is to digitaltruth.com with a series of apps for the film photographer who wants to take control over all his development and printing process.

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.

The Comeback of Film Photography

It seams that I am not the only one fascinated by film photography.

In a recent post on PetaPixel blog Temoor Iqbal published a post entitled "Film Photography is Making a Stunning Comeback" - see link

One thing which adds technical value to me when shooting film is the fact that developed film persists for ages while digital images just disappear in a digital archive and always need some other technology to remain accessible.
In the blog exactly this aspect is outlined too.

Some statements:

"File types come and go—even the ubiquitous JPEG format may not be readable by standard hardware in 20 or 30 years—so constant, active conversion is required to ensure the survival of an archive."

"Ultimately, this is not to say that everyone should immediately discard their digital cameras and switch to film, but rather that film still has a very real and serious place in the world of photography."

Photoblog: Ilford - Best in Black & White

Black and white film and chemicals producer Ilford is running an open photoblog on their corporate website.

Find it at: link

The blog is collecting a number of very interesting stories.

For example the one about Ribnar Mazumdar who calls himself a "hybrid photographer". Meaning, that he is shooting both film and digital following a digital workflow.

Have a look and explore.

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

Street Photography Shooting Film

Shooting street photography using film: the blog post by Eric Kim is an interesting collection of benefits of using film as a photographer.

Interestingly the benefits Eric Kim collected are around slowing down, becoming a better and more serious photographer, he compares to the principles of "zen" where the focus is more on the process of taking the picture than on the picture itself.

And nevertheless it does not seem to be an immediate benefit - the fact that you have to wait until your images get developed - Eric Kim sees this as an add on of excitement to the whole process.

Learn something about Ilford FP4 film

Ilford film manufacturing

How To Develop Film

Another How To Shoot Super 8

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"

Rescued Film Project

The rescued film project is dedicated to rescuing lost and forgotten rolls of film from all over the world. Levi Bettwieser is running that project dedicated to rescuing and archiving these historical images which otherwise would be lost or destroyed.

Among the rescued rolls there is a series of images taken by a world war two soldier which had never been developed. Watch the video below. This is an impressive documentary by Levi Bettwieser about his passion and the series of rolls shot by this soldier 70 years ago that are developed and watched at for the first time.

Once again I learn that images on film have an incredibly long life. Film is probably one of the most persistent storage media for any kind of data. I often ask my self whether my digital image archive will still be available, usable, and searchable in 15 years time given technological development. However, the film negatives from my early days of photography as a child more than 25 years ago are still physically there, I can scan them, process the scans and use them like any digital image today. Same for the pile of slides from my father and grandfather that will never expire.

Levi Bettweiser develops the film in small series by hand at home in his kitchen. He says that developing film which has been stored somewhere most likely under non ideal conditions is a case buy case hand craft. For this kind of film a commercial lab processing hundreds of films per day would just not get the results needed for these historical testimonials.



In order to rescue more film, Levi Bettwieser is running a crowdfunding campaign in order to raise money for development of another stock of 66 bundles of film which is approximately 1200 rolls.