About Cottage Tips

Dear Readers,

As already promised, we'll feature a series of technical contributions, and among them there will be the so-called Cottage Tips. Essentially, it will be a »how-to« series of short (or longer) posts, dealing with various inexpensive technical solutions for improving your photo-gear, upgrading on a tight budget, or even making a piece of equipment not available in the stores. Not necessarily all contributions will be strictly dedicated to film photography, but also for general photographic usage. I am sure some of the contributions you'll find very basic or redundant, something you've been knowing about for ages, but most of them not. We also need to keep in mind the newcomers to (film) photography; they need all the information we can give them. On the long run, I am sure with these tips we can make our photographic endeavours a little bit more comfortable, easier, and hopefully cheaper, too.

silver regards

Mitja

Portfolio of the Week: Martina Woll

Dear Readers,

This week we feature a German photographer, Martina Woll. Martina is an autodidact photographer from Saarbrücken. She works in 35 mm (Canon EOS 3, Minolta SR-T 101, Yashica Electro 35GTN and others) and 6x6 (Mamiya C330S), as well as with Fuji Instax and Holga cameras, with available light as her primary lighting source. Her preferred films are Kodak Tri-X 400 and Agfa APX 100. She develops BW films by herself, usually with Caffenol-C. Her photographic work and interests range widely, very widely; from portraits to still life, to a variety of vehicles, vessels (aircrafts), and other subjects. She also loves the imperfections film has to offer: lightleaks, fluff, blur etc. Most of her inspiration comes from the web, since there is a great deal of talented photographers' work to be seen online, as she states. And she's right! Thus, she has no rigid or exemplar rules about. She has already been featured in a number of publications, including Playboy USA. Besides her portfolio, I personally like very much her Smoking series of photos.

Untitled 13. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 18. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 7. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 64. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 33. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 6. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 31. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 99. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 100. Copyright: Martina Woll

Kell. Copyright: Martina Woll

 

Martina's work can be seen on her website, her photostream on Flickr and Facebook. Enjoy the photos!

silver regards

Mitja

SAD MAG goes digital-free!

The quarterly, Vancouver-based SAD magazine decided to source their images only from analog photos, by this year. While I applaud such a decision, I must admit I didn't fully understand the explanation Kevin Kerr gave about that decision in this article. It 's somehow an alchemistic point of view, in my view (sorry for the pun). But a good point about that decision, in my opinion, is this: "I think a cer­tain amount of sat­is­fac­tion of knowing that Sad Mag is going to be return­ing to film is imag­in­ing the qual­ity of the expe­ri­ence of not only the viewer, but of the pho­tog­ra­pher." Good point, Kevin! Considering the magazine is dedicated to young artists, that will be a good way to nurture the appreciation for film.

The basics

Dear readers!

I'm for now the second contributing autor to this blog, witch it is, you allready know this, dedicated to film and analogue photography. To be clear. I'm not hard core film or analogue photographer. Mitja already wrote that I started as a so called “digital” photographer, at the dawn of commercial digital photography. I’m still am today. I steadily learned the basics and then I started to discover the basics of photography with old all manual analogue cameras found at home. More about this in some post in the future. I was attracted into the classical film and manual cameras (older they are the better) and the aesthetics of analogue image, and the feeling of authenticity that only film photography can give you. I quickly learned to develop a BW film and make my own prints in the darkroom. Then I started to discover the history of photography and now alternative techniques to get the picture. Then I started to look at the masters of photography. I’m still learning the aesthetics and inherent meaning of their photographs. Then the next logical step was to go to photographic school to get the new insight about the photography. 

In the future I want to live from the thing I love to do, photographing. No matter if it is analogue or digital. But I also want to learn the old techniques of making photographs (ultimate goal for me is Daguerreotype) and master the language of the old masters of photography. I embrace many possibly contradicting poles of photography simply from the love of the photography. No doubt that I will remain a “digital” photographer it’s so more practical. But when we are talking about the soul of photography it is no doubly analogue.

 

me, pinhole - 2010

Now let’s talk about the basics. The picture is pinhole self portrait. Exposition was 16 min! I was at the lunch break at my, at that time regular job. What’s basic about that?  The pinhole camera from a cardboard box. That’s the real basic of photography. The camera obscura (the box with a pinhole), the light and the time. That’s all you need.

Matjaž

About Monday columns

Dear Readers,

It is my pleasure to announce one of our "staple" contributions to our blog! My fellow photographer and friend Matjaž gladly accepted the invitation to write a weekly column on Mondays about his own work, experiences and other film-photography-related stuff. I gave him carte blanche, so he will be a co-editor as well. I am not going to write down his whole biography in this post-it would take too much space and it would be quite complex to do, I think. Instead, you will easily get a grasp about his bio by reading his columns, and I am sure it will be a pleasure for you. I will point out only some basic facts about him: I highly regard him, also because he is a »new breed« of analog photographers. That is, he began with a digital camera, but soon realized the superiority of film medium. (I have seen too many »old breed« photographers being totally succumbed by digital). Thus, the transition to film for him was easy, quick, and logical. And what's more, he also quickly »upgraded« the 35mm film format with medium format, by ending with a large format (18x24cm) camera. He mastered film cameras-regardless of their format-in no time. He also took the study route, doing his bachelor degree course in photography. He's really fearless, a true die-hard guy!

Mitja

 

Random Quote

"To keep from going stale you must forget your professional outlook and rediscover the virginal eye of the amateur."  

Brassaï

The substance is crystallizing!

Dear Readers,

Our blog is beginning to get its shape! The main issue for us was not about its content, there are many ideas about  the "substance" (and new ones are emerging), but also the "package" is important in order to make you happy. So, some things became clear now, after a week. On Mondays, there will be a column written by my fellow photographer Matjaž (more about him in the following post). On Wednesdays, as already promised, we will feature a portfolio from one of us (a.k.a. the analog community). On Fridays, there will be a short technical article, a technical news, a camera review, or something in between. Most likely, there will be other contributions as well. Of course, these are no rigid rules how the blog will appear in the future, but you get the idea. We will be more than pleased and thankful if you send us suggestions and preferences, it matters very much in order to fulfill our mission-connecting our analog community.

Mitja