film photography – Page 2 – I dream of sumac and milkweed (and other wild things)

herbs and flowers and life

June 25, 2019June 25, 2019 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I’m still enamored with the Mamiya C220 and intent on making the best photos with it that I can. One thing that plagues me is that you can get close–I mean really, really close–with this camera, but in doing so you have to frame just right because what you’re looking at is not what the film is going to capture because the lens you’re looking through is two inches higher than the lens that records the image. Roughly. I’m no expert on this, but I do know that when shooting something far away, this is not a problem. Up close, yeah, it can be funky.

But since it lets you get so close, that’s what I want to do. I’m not going to hunt for the tripod device that does this for you since I don’t often shoot with my tripod. So I’ll keep guessing and probably getting it wrong a lot. Fine with me.

A week or two ago now (I don’t know, the weeks are getting mushy), the evening I shot what ended up to be all red and hot pink cross-processed images, I also shot a roll of Kodak Portra 400 through the Mamiya C220, focusing on the new blooms of the herbs and the poppy flowers in Cherry Point’s garden. Some of the poppy images came out poorly framed, so, I have some work to do figuring that out. Again, fine.

poppies, not framed exactly how I wanted

poppy, still not exactly what I was going for

I had a day and night alone at the cottage and yesterday the fog blanketed the beach and the backroads, in some places so thick it was otherworldly. I know these backroads by foot, bike and car and even I was turned around in some spots. But it meant for seeing things differently, and I had the Mamiya loaded and with me when I went out for an errand and filled a roll of what I hope are foggy, ethereal landscapes evocative of yesterday’s still, damp, foggy mood.

Also yesterday, I cancelled an appointment. In desperation last week I scheduled my dog for, you know, the end of life (I can’t write the word–I just can’t). She seemed like she was going downhill so quickly and I was sure of it, resolved in my decision to not let her suffer. And then over the weekend she seemed to rally, enjoy things, even play a little. She’s still aging. She’s still suffering dementia and I know she’s in some pain, stiff, confused at times, and I know where this is going. But she’s not ready right now and I owe her whatever time she can enjoy. It’s hard and it’s life and that’s it.

Storms came through last night although I didn’t hear them. I woke up once to lightning and some low growls but that’s all I remember. Today the lake is loud and shouty although the wind is light. I used to love a rough lake, but now one rough day does so much damage to the fragile shore and dune–you can see the damage from just one day of wild waves. I’m hopeful that later summer will bring some stabilization of the shoreline, because that’s what usually happens, but water levels are expected to continue going up.

I know I have to not worry so much.

Anyway, in a week or two I should have a roll of Lomography Purple showing a bit of the dune decay, among other things, and that roll of Portra on the backroads in the fog. Today though, on a sunny and loud day on the beach where my dog is still here and snoring comfortably on the couch and I am drinking coffee and need to get to work, here are some photos of herbs and flowers, some not framed exactly as I expected, from Cherry Point Farm Market’s garden.

thoughts? I don’t know what this one is…

extraterrestrial

June 20, 2019 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I put a roll of poorly stored, expired (2006, I think?) Fujichrome (Sensia, I think?) film in my Minolta SRT-102 last week and shot it in the garden at Cherry Point Market, then mailed it to the lab and asked them to cross-process it. I wasn’t expecting much (see “poorly stored” and note my lack of actual attention to the film details).

Uh, I don’t know what happened here. Every image is either this crazy pink/purple or red. I don’t have the negatives back so I can’t tell if they really look like this or if the lab maybe had the settings wrong on the scanner, but these are the scans they sent me and I’m totally digging whatever it is that is happening here.

This sort of result is not for the perfectionist, I know. But I’m no perfectionist. I’m messy, bad at a lot of things, experimental, and I’m done censoring myself. I’m going to make crappy art. I’m going to explore. I’m not apologizing.

(Wait. I apologize if this post hurts your eyeballs. But that’s all I’m apologizing for.)

purple in Detroit

June 8, 2019 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Detroit and metro on lomo purple — DESTROY, at the Lincoln Street Art Park

I’m a big fan of Lomography’s Lomochrome Purple film. I don’t know what it is about it, but the color shifts and the sometimes surprising outcomes just hit all the buttons for me. They keep fiddling with the chemistry of it each year, but I just know that every roll I’ve shot has made me oh so happy, even when things don’t come out quite right.

Last month I took a rare day off and my son’s girlfriend and I planned a day to hit MOCAD and the art supply store and whatever else we wished that day. We probably should have checked in advance, but the museum just happened to be closed for a private event. So we took the opportunity to hit two of Detroit’s outdoor art venues, the Lincoln Street Art Park and the Heidelberg Project, then ate at Sister Pie and had coffee (and bought two cakes; well, a half of two different cakes because they didn’t have a whole cake to buy) at the new Ochre Bakery. I’m linking to these things because if you find yourself in Detroit, maybe you ought to make a day of art and food and check these places out, too, because they are uniquely Detroit and definitely awesome.

I shot most of a roll of Lomochrome Purple that day and, as expected, the results made me swoony. Blues turn greens; greens turn purples; yellows are pinks. It’s weird and lovely.

I have two rolls of it left from a batch I bought last summer, 35mm. I pre-ordered 5 rolls in 120mm that should arrive next month, and now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just go ahead and pre-order another 5 rolls of 35mm because geez. I really do love it. I want to see everything in purple. Is that too much to ask?

You can see more from this roll, and other purple and non-purple stuff, here.

digging the TLR

June 4, 2019June 20, 2019 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I think I’ve run at least six or eight rolls of film through the Mamiya C220 since it was gifted to me last fall. I’ve made multiple mistakes on most of these rolls, from double exposures (although those are almost always happy mistakes) to winding past exposures (I got only two or three exposures on my first roll) to not latching the back properly to… I don’t even know. If there’s a way to do this camera wrong, I think I’ve done it so far.

But, this last roll, Portra 160 shot throughout last week. I worked slowly. I forwarded carefully (oh so carefully). I metered each shot. I kept my hair out the way and made sure my fingers didn’t get in front of the bottom lens. I held the camera steady and didn’t breathe. I still guessed on compensating for the fact that you frame with one lens and the bottom lens is the one that takes the shot–a conundrum if you’re close to your subject, which I was in a few cases. But my guesses weren’t too bad on the close stuff.

It’s grown on me. There is a persistent sort of charm to this camera. It’s awkward to use but I’m getting there. The flipped image is confusing me a little less lately. My horizons are getting a bit straighter. The gentle click of the shutter is soothing. The dreamy image in the ground glass makes me want to look at everything through its eye.

If I’m slow and careful, the detail this camera lets me capture up close is magic. I can’t wait to practice with it on the dunes this summer as more wild things bloom.

Lake Michigan has my heart — silver-y Lake Michigan, and fingertip of storm front

May blooms and growth on the lakeshore — delicate-looking but hardy sand cress

I like my hair better in Texas

May 9, 2019 sumacandmilkweed4 Comments

and other pointless observations

I don’t have a picture of my hair in Texas. I’m not much for selfies, and no one is clamoring to snap any photos of me. But, I was in Austin spending time with my daughter and soaking up the muggy heat and ignoring my own life for just a few days and I gotta say, my hair looked poofy and full and not flat and static-y and I just liked it.

My hip flexor, which I tore and wrote about last post (in March, no less–I’m trying not to ignore this blog but it seems that’s what I’ve done) is 95% better. Sometimes I feel it a little but I’m not babying it anymore. The black and white film class I took at community college just finished a week ago today. I’ve got a bunch of negatives to scan and I’m not thrilled for that because I can’t seem to make a decent scan come out of my scanner. Plus, scanning is a royal pain in the ass.

The cottage window is fixed and the house survived the winter; the beach did not. The bluff in front of our cottage is in ruins, disarray; the pipes and tires we drove into the shoreline as protective jetties more than 30 years ago are now exposed, our stairs no longer usable, a high cliff from the bluff to the water. We know how it goes, but it still stings and it still gives me nightmares. We can only hope for the levels of the Great Lakes to go down, but I’d prefer to plan than leave things to hope or chance. I want to know what’s next, even if I’m not going to like it. I do better with that.

Still, it’s not like the cottage is about to fall off the bluff and into the lake (I don’t say this jokingly as there are cottages on these lakes that have done just that). We’re not in danger yet. The view is still spectacular, the wildflowers and the deer and the foxes and the eagles will still make appearances, the sun will still rise and set and make for appreciative conversation. Summer warmth will kiss our bare skin and make us feel better about the world.

Austin and film soaked in McClary Bros. thai basil drinking vinegar

Yeah, say that three times fast.

We went to a park in an Austin suburb and walked a trail there that wound through scrub and cacti and wildflowers and it was hot and sunny and wonderful. The leaves had only just unfurled here in Michigan and the earliest spring flowers are in bloom, but in Texas it was lush and green and fields of yellow and red and orange wildflowers were riotous and plentiful. Anyway, I shot a roll of film mostly in that park with the last few shots around my daughter’s neighborhood and on the rooftop deck of her apartment building.

The film is Lomography 100 ISO color film. The thai basil drinking vinegar I soaked it in a few months ago offered a pretty subtle effect, with no great streaks or bubbles of color, but some gentle color shifts mainly. I’m good with it.

hotel St. Cecilia, which I’m hoping some day I can afford to stay a night in because it’s so charming

Until next time, Texas. I might not come ’round in the summer because, well, you’re really hot, and I don’t mean that in a nice way. But you’ve grown on me, and I like to see my kid, so keep some beer in the cooler for me, will ya?

happy birthday to me!

January 19, 2019January 19, 2019 sumacandmilkweed6 Comments

Ooof. It’s mid-January. It finally decided to be winter around here, starting today (our first real snow is happening as I write). I turned 52 a few weeks ago. And I’m not even about to say the things you’d think I might be about to say about that. I’m not even kidding. I’m 52, I’m here, I’m okay with all of it. Really!

Also as I write, right now, I’m sort of waiting to collectively decide if we are driving across state today to check on the cottage. The roads are crap, so we might hold off until morning in hopes that they will be less snow-covered. It’s been a long week and my decision-making skills are near to nonexistent on a Saturday, so while the snow falls I think I’ll write here and let the weather prevail. Besides, there’s a dog snoring on the couch across from me. Which makes me want to nap and even further put off both decision making and driving.

I did walk around town a bit today in the falling snow and shot most of a roll that was already in my Minolta SRT-102. I’ve not had great luck with snowy scenes thus far but I’ll keep trying. And I want to finish this roll of color film because I’ll be shooting black and white for a while. Last week I started a darkroom class at a community college not terribly far from me. I took this class in winter of 2017 and I really could not wait to take it again, so here I am. I hope I don’t annoy the instructor or my classmates because I am way too excited to be in a darkroom again!

I shot several rolls of film the first few weeks of the year, with some mixed results. I shot a gift roll of dubblefilm sunstroke, one of the many rolls of film I got from my EMULSIVE Secret Santa, around the dunes in Silver Lake State Park. I knew it would be a fun film, and it was a little more subtle than I expected, but I love a good surprise film and this didn’t disappoint. It has a nice warmth to it, don’t you think? It’s actually Kodak Gold 200, and I’m not sure what the folks at dubblefilm do to it make the random flares, but who cares? It’s fun, and I’ve got nothing against that.

The weekend I shot the dubblefilm I also shot another gift roll from my Secret Santa of Lomography f2 through the Mamiya C220 that I am still working to get the hang of. I also ran a roll of Lomography color 400 and a roll of Kodak Portra 400 through the C220 that weekend, which was a gorgeous, sunny, mild weekend on the lakeshore. I have a lab that I love, but sometimes the 120 images I get back from them have some kind of funky pattern on them; I’m not sure if it’s the developing or the scanning. And, one of the rolls from this group came out really extra crispy. Lots of grain, plus patterning. I never have an issue with 35mm film they develop, but every now and then 120 has the patterning and other oddities.

Like this one:

Lots of noise, plus a pattern. And, this one:

But here are some others that came out a bit better. And again, I’m really working hard with the C220. The whole twin lens thing is mysterious to me. You have to sort out how to position the camera just right, and how to adjust yourself just right, to get things in frame correctly and get a horizon that is, well, horizontal. The struggle is real.

I just wonder if maybe the chemicals needed refreshing when these rolls were developed, because my last roll of the year, developed the week before these, doesn’t have the same characteristics. Here are a few from that one:

Anyway.

Last weekend I was in Austin, Texas visiting my daughter. A trip she bought me, AND she surprised me with a massage at a swanky spa AND a pedicure at her favorite salon. My heart was full all weekend. I shot one roll of film, which I’m eager to have developed because I definitely screwed it up. About 10 shots in and walking on UT Austin’s campus on a beautiful, warm, windy day I accidentally popped the back open on my Minolta. It must not have been fully shut, but it surprised me. So I’m not sure what I’ll get with that one.

I was great about taking film and camera notes in 2018 and I was very proud of myself for that, and already a few weeks in to 2019 I’m not sure what’s what. I have a roll of Portra 160 in my Minolta now; I’ve shot and accounted for four rolls of film, but without the negatives in front of me I can’t remember what’s what. I would say 2019 might be the year of limiting my film choices so my recordkeeping is a little easier, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen. I have a stockpile of differing films that I should probably use up, so I will. Ah, well. I have 11 months to get my act together.

These images and a few others from these rolls of film are on my flickr albums, here and here, if you want to see more. Speaking of flickr. I’m still debating using it, which will in the near future require me to pay for a pro membership. I am wrestling with the pros and cons of that. If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

working on the thankfulness

November 23, 2018December 26, 2018 sumacandmilkweed5 Comments

Changes are still rolling along around here. Just riding the rollercoaster, trying to be the best daughter, mother, partner, human, all of that, and continue to nurture my creativity and my soul. I’ve said more times in the last few weeks phrases like “I won’t go down with the ship,” and “I won’t let this break me.” Dramatic, I know. But we get so comfortable in our phases and it stings a bit to get pushed out of them. Or maybe that’s just me, and I’m a bit selfish.

Anyway. In late October, just after I got back from Iceland, I spent a weekend at the cottage while my husband, son, and a few of their biking friends took part in a race in a town just a few miles from here. That weekend, my son’s girlfriend (who is like a daughter to me) and I spent a few hours out on the dunes of Silver Lake. This is truly one of my favorite places to photograph and it simply never disappoints. Open landscape, windswept dunes, ghosts of trees from centuries past, living and breathing dunescape. I don’t have the negatives in front of me, but I’m pretty sure it was T-Max 100, maybe expired.

And now I can’t remember if it was that same weekend, or a later weekend, that I shot this odd roll of Lomography Lomochrome Purple on the backroads and at the market near the cottage. I love this film and I have shot it a fair bit, but this one was different…

There are little green flecks in it, not totally visible in some of the images but definitely there in all of them. This roll wasn’t stored very well and traveled with me to and from Iceland, so maybe something went wrong with it somewhere? Odd, but that’s okay.

So, yesterday was Thanksgiving and it’s been a bittersweet several days. My family has been in and out and I am beyond thankful for time I get with my kids. But I am struggling to be what my dad needs and still be myself. We have been home and at the cottage. The waves and wind on Lake Michigan soothe me but I think they are unnerving my dad. I don’t know what’s next. I just don’t know what’s next.

More from these two rolls here. (Edited this last sentence because while writing last night, I apparently accidentally pasted a link to a concise answer to a grammar question I was asked rather than the link to my flickr album. Oops.)

Mamiya(s) test rolls

November 15, 2018 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

LDC_20181108_82000001 — Lake Michigan, Mamiya M645 and Kodak Ektar

LDC_20181108_82000006 — sun rays over Lake Michigan, Mamiya M645 and Kodak Ektar

A few weeks ago, before my dog hurt her leg and before I even began to realize that holidays are coming and winter is coming and the days are getting short and there will be snow soon (in fact, it’s snowing as I write this and it’s really beautiful), I was gifted two cameras and I couldn’t wait to use them. So I did use them, on the west side of Michigan, to document the then-colorful leaves and other fall-type stuff.

woods in west Michigan, Mamiya M645 and Kodak Ektar

wooded trail, west Michigan, Mamiya M645 and Kodak Ektar

The Mamiya M645 was easy. It is actually quite a bit smaller than my beloved Bronica SQ-A, and I already had experience with my son’s Mamiya 645 1000s. The differences are that the 1000s has a shutter speed up to 1000 (mine only goes to 500), and it literally eats batteries–to use it, you have to pop the battery in before you take a photo and then pop it out again and carry it in a warm pocket. If you are out and about with it and forget to do this, the battery will croak mid-roll. There’s no meter, but the shutter relies on the battery and will stay open if the battery is dead. My M645 seems to have no battery issues but the foam seals are pretty crusty and I did get some bits on some of my images. I might try to replace the seals myself if I’m feeling crafty over the winter, but it’s certainly usable for now.

LDC_20181108_82040006 — branch, Lake Michigan, Mamiya M645 and Kodak Portra

LDC_20181108_82040001 — driftwood, Lake Michigan, Mamiya M645 and Kodak Portra

Anyway, I may have to underexpose a tiny bit with the M645 as more of my shots seemed slightly overexposed, especially on the beach. But, I couldn’t be more thrilled with this camera and I’m happy to have a non-plastic camera (don’t get me wrong, I love my toy cameras) in the 6×4.5 format. This camera will be in regular rotation.

LDC_20181108_81990001 — Lost Lake, Mamiya M645 and Kodak Ektar

LDC_20181108_81980006 — tree stump, Mamiya M645 and Kodak Ektar

LDC_20181108_81990002 — Lost Lake reflections, Mamiya M645 and Kodak Ektar

The Mamiya C220 is a different bird altogether. A TLR (twin lens reflex) with a standard waist-level viewfinder means you hold it at around chest or waist level and look down into this beautiful piece of ground glass that makes you feel all swoony and happy because something about it just looks like you’re about to get the most gorgeous, dreamy, lovely image ever.

LDC_20181108_000250240001 — old well in dunegrass, Mamiya C220, Fuji Acros

Except that you’re looking at your image flip-flopped, as in right is left and left is right, and if there’s a horizon your brain has to do all sorts of work to figure out just the right way to tilt the camera and your body so that the horizon is straight (if you like straight horizons, which I really do), and then if you’re close to your subject (which you can be very close with a TLR) you have to take into account that you’re framing by looking through the top lens, and the lens that actually captures the image is two inches lower than that, and so your brain just explodes because it’s not used to all of that.

fall, backroad in west Michigan, Mamiya C220 and Lomography f2 film

So, I know that you probably shouldn’t test a new camera with experimental film, but I seem to have a knack for doing just that. The color roll I shot through the C220 was Lomography f2 400, which the folks at Lomography aged in wine casks for 7 years. There is a red/pink line that runs down the right side of all of the images from this roll, and I think it’s the film rather than the camera, because the few shots I got from the black and white Fuji Acros I tested did not have this line. (I only got three shots from the Acros roll–I hadn’t quite figured out the sensitivity of the film forwarding crank.)

LDC_20181108_000250640004 — close up fail, Mamiya C220 and Lomography f2 film

So, the M645 is easy and familiar and wonderful. The C220 challenges me and is going to take a lot more practice, but I’m all in. The C220’s foam seals are also pretty deteriorated, which may account for some light leaks on the edges of some shots.

I just registered for the winter term of the same film class I took two years ago at a local community college and I really can’t wait to take it again, to be in the darkroom processing film and printing again with all kinds of equipment and tools available to me. I think the C220 will be a big part of my winter work there.

I also learned first from another blogger (who you might want to read if you like photography) that flickr is changing their mode of business. I started using flickr to host my photos because it was (fairly) easy to link them to this blog, and it seems like if I don’t do something like that the space here gets filled mighty quickly and I will have to go to a pricey plan in order to stay here. Flickr was free. But now it’s not. So, I need to make some decisions about how to proceed–pay for a flickr pro account or upgrade to a business plan on WordPress, or just upload super low res images (ick) that take up very little space. When I started blogging it was more about having an avenue for my writing, but then I picked up a camera and, well, things just get more expensive. So, decisions to be made.

Iceland, final installment in Lomochrome Purple

October 15, 2018 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I know I’ll think about and talk about Iceland until I go back. But it feels a little sad to post the final photos from this trip. I took my Olympus Pen EE3 with me to Iceland, too, and didn’t think twice about using Lomography Lomochrome Purple, a whimsical film in a whimsical camera.

The EE3 is a half-frame camera, a compact little thing with the faintest whisper of a click when you press the button to take a picture. There’s no mirror to flap about. It’s a true point and shoot–you set the film speed (it only goes to 400) and there are only two shutter speeds (the camera chooses). If it’s too dark to get a decent image, a little red flag pops up in the viewfinder and the shutter won’t fire. It shoots on half of a 35mm frame, so you get two images (portrait mode unless you turn the camera sideways), which you can treat as individual images or as groupings, and which means you get 72 (or more) images from a 36 exposure roll of film. Kind of a lot of bang for the buck. I love this camera.

I asked the lab to scan this roll two-up, since I try to shoot with two images per frame in mind. But they forgot, and so I got 72 single images. Which means if I want any diptychs or triptychs, I’m going to have to haul my scanner out and get serious about trying to get a decent scan out of it (I need help).

So, the final installment. I’m no longer walking around all dreamy-eyed, seeing mountains and waterfalls. I’m in my house, working in my office, listening to my dog snore ever-louder in her old age, hearing the train whistle as it goes through my city, looking in my pantry and wondering what to make for dinner, getting the mail, etc. Travel and newness is exciting, but there’s nothing wrong with the mundanity of daily life.

You can see most of the rest of this roll here; read more from my September trip to Iceland in my previous three posts.

more Iceland

October 11, 2018October 11, 2018 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

I’m feeling more here, now. And that’s okay, but I’m also spending a few minutes (at least) each day letting myself feel all dreamy about Iceland and also think about what might come next. Oh have I got ideas. There is so much out there to see.

I got notice that my last five rolls of film were developed, scanned, and uploaded yesterday, and that my film is on its way back to me from the lab in California. I ordered prints–matte with white border–so those are on the way as well (I love to have prints, but I almost never order them).

These are all from the Bronica; two rolls of Fuji Acros (100 ISO), one Ilford FP4+, and the color roll is Fuji Velvia (50 ISO slide film).

I should have mentioned in that previous post, where I was all grateful about the peanut butter, that I’m grateful to my husband for keeping the show going while I was trying to not get blown off a cliff 3,000 miles away. He kept our old dog alive and (relatively) happy. If anything burned down or broke or flooded while I was away, he took care of it and I’m none the wiser. If there were any upheavals or complaints that I might have otherwise have been called upon to contend with, he kept me out of them. He’s a bit of a rock and I don’t think I tell him often enough that I appreciate him. And if he’s intolerant of my need to see the world, he doesn’t show it and for that I am profoundly grateful.