Dudes in the woods with rock. #FilmFriday

January 8, 2016 // Author: James // 1 Comment

5 years ago today I emailed the most excellent Andrew Hetherington because he had posted something about giving away the remainder of his film to someone as he was transitioning to digital. He was looking for deserving people with good ideas. I emailed him quickly and sincerely promised to put it to no good use; except maybe to start a new series of self-nude portraiture. Sometime a week or two later a bag of film arrived in the mail. I haven’t gotten around to the portrait series but the film got used anyway.

I insert this butt shot for Andrew. The downside to being mostly on the ground for bouldering is that you do get a lot of butt shots. It’s not the goal – just sort of happens. I try to avoid it mostly but this one was too perfect. Two butt shot – and I managed to photograph 5 people at various angles and still get no faces at all. Mad skills.

Double armed dogs. Sounds like a pseudo yoga move or a bad TV gang. This past Sunday was a fun one. I had wandered around and initially saw no one. It turns out they were out by the Pond Cave. It was sort of like there was some kind of Red Team / Blue Team going on but that was fine by me. Happenstance making for interesting lines. The lighting was interesting and I was trying out the EOS 3 with its new focusing screen. If you are the proud owner of a miscalibrated EOS 3 film cameras as I am: try out an A type focusing screen. I went from having 3 out of 36 photos in focus to something like 28 of 36 (relying on autofocus before and mostly manual focus now). Night and day.

The backgrounds were interesting. Swing and a miss. But, it seems like I was mostly getting shots of Tim doing cool things. I felt pretty dialed in. Although I was shooting some with the EOS – the primary camera was still the 645. Looking at an image like this… man I do love film. There is a grittiness to images that is a saturated version of real life. Before they remastered and ruined it – the Indiana Jones Temple of Doom outdoor scene at the very end was obviously shot with a different film stock. It went from indoor studio lighting to dark shadowed gritty wild exterior. I always loved the look of the initial outdoor sequence. Part of the beauty of medium format is that the sharp parts are really sharp and the out of focus is silky smooth. Ryan’s a bit blurred because he is moving but the details are evident.
It’s always a good day out in the woods. Stow. Stoic? I know man it’s a terrible pun. I’m sure I’m the first. It’s all I’ve got – it’s Friday.

About 10 months after A. Hetherington sent me his film I picked up a Canon 5D. Although I had been shooting digital for a bit, it was still something of a revelation. The Fuji Pro digital cameras I had been using (because I love Fuji film) didn’t have the beautiful colors and tonality that Canon provided. Now, we’re a few generation beyond it and heavily into digital.

But, the analog magic is still special. This photochemical image-making process called film. I don’t worry about the last shot – just the next one. Also, it’s probably helping my fine motor skills to manual focus so much. Maybe.

Technical Notes:

Shot on a Canon Eos 3 with Kodak films and a Contax 645 with Fuji films. German design, Japanese manufacturing, and American engineering; we’ve got it all.As always – my thanks to the climbers!