FPP Walking Workshop

Last weekend my friend Jane and I went to Findlay, Ohio to participate in the Film Photography Project‘s “walking workshop” with about 100 or so other people, who were about 95% men. That last bit is neither here nor there, but I did find it a little surprising and somewhat noteworthy. Do men have more free time for pursuits like camera collecting and film photography? Are women just not as interested in workshops? I don’t know these things. But, Jane and I enjoyed the workshops, the freebies, the FPP store, the FPP podcast crew, wandering around town during the car show, and the venue (the Jones Mansion).

We each bought $10 plastic point and shoot cameras with ridiculous telescoping lenses. I bought a $10 t-shirt (can’t have enough t-shirts) and a roll of T-Max 3200 ISO film. I won a Minolta Hi-Matic G. I’ve never had so many men say “I like your dress” (it’s my favorite dress right now, a print of old-style cameras)–the best comment being “I don’t wear dresses often, but I’d wear that one.” I mean, c’mon! What’s not to love here?

I shot a roll of color film a few weeks ago on the west side of Michigan, mostly flowers (both wild and planted) with the idea of re-shooting for a whole roll of double exposures. Since there was a car show going on in downtown Findlay during the workshop, I ended up shooting some cars and alleys and streetscapes over the flowers on that roll. I have some other film ready and a few rolls to finish up before I send the re-shot roll for developing, but I’m excited to see what I get.

Anyway, here are some images from the test rolls from those two cameras I mentioned a few weeks back, the camera given to me by a neighbor (that Minolta Maxxum 300si) and the goodwill camera (a Minolta Freedom Zoom 90). The goodwill camera is huge and clunky and the zoom pretty much broke at the end of the test roll. The Maxxum’s longer lens might be really useful and although overall I probably won’t use this camera too often, I’m going to keep it around. The Freedom shot a 1989 expired roll of Ektachrome (cross processed) and I didn’t expect much from that, but got a few shots I kind of liked. The Maxxum had a roll of Fuji 800 ISO film in it and who knows how old it was or how it was stored. So, experiments.