yeah you know how that saying goes. Well here’s the deal: I’m about to start a project that has been in my head for a while germinating. It’s taken me a bit to figure out how I want the images to look. I knew that I didn’t want it to look, well, like the bulk of "modern" editorial images these days meaning: that clean almost plastic look of our digital cameras. It needs some character. I don’t like the idea of spending hours messing about in Photoshop to take an image and transform it into something else. That’s not me. I would rather do everything in camera.
So the idea that I was looking for finally hit me and after a bit of research I found my tool: a cheap Chinese twin lens reflex camera called a Seagull 4A. It’s halfway between a Holga and a Roleiflex. It’s not a toy but it’s very cheaply built with a poor but not awful lens that vignettes pretty badly. Perfect! So given some Ilford HP5 B&W film and Rodinal development I get a grainy but very sharp and character laden 2 1/4 neg from a camera that cost me $40 new in box thanks to e-bay.
I had to give it a field test so I took it along to a shoot of these two guys who do web design for Hispanic companies here in Denver. My new toy camera hooked to my Pocket Wizard transmitter, yeah yeah all that silly lighting stuff again, and I got a shot that IMO is much cooler that what I got from my "pro" digital setup. Now I’m set to start that there project. News about that when it launches.
I think that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
