I mentioned in this post that I brought my Holga with me on our hike at the Sandy River Delta. I finally got the film developed and scanned the negatives. I am getting better at scanning medium format negatives with my film scanner. I also learned that I had the settings all wrong for black and white which made the last batch of black and white negatives look weird. I’m going to re-scan them at some point (note to self). .
Anyway, I am super happy with how these turned out! Seriously. I am in love with black and white film. I don’t know if I want to ever go back to digital. I just love it that much. I love that this is how it looks pretty much out of the camera. Admittedly, I adjusted contrast and maybe exposure ever so slightly, but that is it.
I brought a roll of black and white film, Kodak Tmax 400 35mm, to the beach with me yesterday. I noticed the differences between shooting with film vs the immediacy of digital. With film you have to let go the notion of being a control freak. It’s more about taking the shot and then letting it go. You take your shot and hope for the best and then wait (sometimes weeks or months) to see what it looks like. And there is something magical about that space of time in between taking the shot and seeing the image. It’s like waiting for Santa. Sometimes you are disappointed but sometimes you are happy beyond your wildest imagination.
A couple of weeks ago we had a nice, sunny day. At least for a few hours. I was told that Holgas like nice, sunny days (color film anyway). So I filled her with film and headed out. My original thought was to wander the streets of Sandy, starting at the Toll Gate Inn. I didn’t get any further than Toll Gate. It’s really a wonderful place to photograph, filled with all sorts of artifacts from the olden days.
This photo was an interesting screw-up. I often mess up at least one shot on the roll of film. In this particular case I realized I accidentally shot the photo between frames. I like how it turned out and I am going to try shooting an entire roll of film like that! maybe do a panorama or something.
I just discovered this: NaPoWriMo, in which you write a poem everyday! I am super sad that I missed out on starting this on April 1st. But I think I will follow the rest of the prompts. It’s a good way to excercise that part of my brain. I probably won’t post everything that I write, but perhaps, if I am feeling brave, I will post some of it.
Today’s prompt is to write a poem about an animal. I didn’t write anything – yet. But I found one that I wrote last summer when I was going through a poetry writing bender. I was working through a fabulous book called Writing Poetry from the Inside Out
The poems from these exercises are in no way finished, and in fact, I will probably go in today and play around with this one. But I thought it might be fun to share, especially since birds are featured in the poem.
I have thought about birds a lot lately. I get up before dawn everyday and have enjoyed hearing the sunrise (as opposed to seeing it). When the sun rises I can hear a beautiful symphony of birds singing outside and it makes my heart happy.
The words for this poem sketch were: Ecstasy, Garments, Linger, Dawn. I wrote it the morning after a lightening storm, the one that caused Mt. Hood to catch on fire, actually.
The flashes of light
From the sky at dawn
Linger in my head.
The birds wear their
New wet garments
As they sing their songs
About the ecstasy of being.
