English content Originally posted on ELLO
Forward to film
Yesterday night I made my second try in developing 35mm film. I could have called this ’Back to 35mm film', but truth is this not a back action, it’s moving forward. Somebody told me I was probably looking for Vintage. Hell no, I’m looking for more manual action, interaction with physical media instead of having a full digital chain.
I’m still a geek, a child of digital world and I still love that. It’s more a matter of adding constraints to my work and feed creativity. Shooting on film doesn’t forgive: you have very limited amount of available shots and no instant feedback. You need to invest and will probably fail again and again before achieving anything. That’s the price for learning.
My first tries in developing are pretty ok, at least something appeared on the negative :) Nothing creative here, only following rules on temperature and concentrations. But the shot in studio are … well, pretty bad actually. I forgot about the synchronization speed and left my old Canon AE-1 to 1/125 which is probably a very bad idea, since I’m pretty sure a third of the picture is actually the curtain :/ A few shot might be saved and worth to be printed in order to move to the next stage: own prints and treatments.
Using non-digital technologies allow to measure the distance, to stand back and understand more closely our tools. It’s also a very good way to fight against this kind of Vintage fashion / instagram-filter treatments / films emulation … that I use myself a lot more than I would like to admit. It’s more a matter of giving more space to intent. Intent should be the initial stage, and it is: but ideas grow and doesn’t cover the whole chain of the creation process at the very beginning. You start with an idea, a subject, a first intent and then stuff occurs: you shoot, process, see, feel. Intent is transforming itself then. The idea is a living creature and its physical form only depends on you. On your skills, on your freedom but also on your ability to match your creative process with the initial intent.
By introducing more constraints, here non digital work that I need to learn back, I’m focusing on the intent. It demands to reduce the scope, to shrink down the number of possibilities and learn what you have to achieve your initial intent.
I hope I will be able to post the picture soon. Yeah, I know the picture here is a crappy iPhone shot with a crappy filter and a ton of noise. I’m an oxymoron.
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