New York City and an ode to film photography

Another world, another time.

It's quite possible many who read this have never shot film. Even less who have made their own roll, developed it, and made prints in a dark room. It's humorous to think back to when I was young and the Nikon D1 was released: the first digital SLR camera. A friend and I said, "digital photography? What a joke... I'm film for life! A real photographer would never use digital." Well time went on, technology got better (way better), and life's responsibilities increased, so we got over our elitist ways (aka matured) and went digital like the rest of the world.

In all its facets, technology has consistently improved efficiency. Film photography takes so much time, but the hands on aspect is extremely satisfying. In highschool I felt lucky to have a bedroom with linoleum flooring because that meant my room could easily be converted into a darkroom, which is exactly what I did. It's hard to describe the feeling of making photography with your hands instead of with a mouse. The darkroom was like a sanctuary. You put on a favorite album and hours later emerge with something the world has never seen.

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_{I scanned the following prints with a normal scanner, so unfortunately sharpness and contrast weren't preserved the best.}

Listening to the light.

Before graduating highschool I bought myself a plane ticket. I took a solo trip from Anchorage, Alaska to New York City. It was a year and a half after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center and I went with two things in my bag: my Nikon FE2 and tickets to see Sigur Ros at Radio City Music Hall. I was a highschool student, so my low budget got me a simple bunk at a youth hostel just a block from Times Square. $20 a night? Heck yeah! The city was alive in so many ways I had never seen. It was ripe to explore and filled with endless opportunities for street photography. This is just a small sample of photos, and not the greatest quality; I've yet to bother transitioning my material from the old world into the new digital age.

The best way to present images shot on film is to print them in a darkroom. It's an intimate practice which shows in little, easy to miss details. For example, the rough border around these images is caused by my negative carrier. The edges of the window where the image shines through when making a print can be shaped with a metal file, giving each print a border that's akin to a signature.
If you get the exposure for a print just right, but one spot needs to be lighter or darker, you 'burn' or 'dodge'. The button in photoshop bearing the same name doesn't have a funny little wand icon for no reason; when doing this in a darkroom you actually use a round piece of cardboard on a stick, waving it around so one spot of the picture "dodges" the light. The possibilities are endless.

When you have a finished print the result is a representation of so many personal choices: film selection, exposure, developing process, paper selection, print exposure and techniques, print bath. Yeah, there's also that whole aspect of not instantly seeing the image right after you take it too. And, all the moments you could possibly ruin it and never see the picture: smudging the film with your finger while rolling it on a developing reel, accidentally exposing it to light, using the wrong chemicals... digital makes things so much easier.

Back then photography truly felt like doing art, but now I'm an adult. I've got a full time job, a wife, kids, a mortgage; I don't have time for film. More than 90% of photographers that are paid thousands of dollars to do photography don't have time for film. In the freedom of youth I may have had the flexibility to be an artist who would never sully his craft with pixels, but maaaaaan, I 'aint got time for that! Film is something special. There's nothing like the smells of a darkroom and seeing that image magically appear before your eyes for the first time. But, with digital I've been able to do the occasional professional job and continue my hobby while maintaining life's responsibilities.

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Explore, learn, grow.

New York was a milestone experience for me. I hadn't graduated highschool or moved out of my mom's house, but I traveled to the other side of the nation and explored America's biggest city by myself, on my own summer-job dime. I saw things I had never seen before (Hasidic Jews, mentally disturbed vagrants hallucinating on the sidewalk, a war protest) and witnessed an awkward thing that was monumental for my country. Walking down a street the typical choked skyline surrounded me, then a couple blocks ahead a strange swath of sunlight shined through. There are no breaks in the tall towers of New York City, but this was where the World Trade Center stood less than two years prior. By then the ground was scraped clean, but the walls of pictures still surrounded that empty spot: people lost, hearts broken. Then in Battery Park I saw the globe that once stood at the twin towers' entrance, now mangled and reassembled, with a monumental flame ever burning at its base.

My bunk-mate at the hostel was a world traveler from the UK. It happened to be his birthday the night of the Sigur Ros concert. The sweet deal I scored on ebay included two tickets, and I only needed one, so we went together to Radio City Music Hall. He told me how he saw the band play in Iceland before they made it big. I discovered a pretty great musician that was the opening act for the night: The Album Leaf.

If I ever get the negatives professionally transferred to digital I'll share more photos from that trip. There's so much more. It's not easy when I only have prints done by hand, and the quality of scanning at my disposal isn't so great. But I encourage you to get out and explore your world, create things with your hands, and develop memories that will be with you forever.