Silver Nitrate Photo

The digital photography revolution has changed the business of photography more than just about anything else in its history.  Photography has become much cheaper and  more accessible to everyone.  Still, the physics of photography remain the same – a shutter opens for a set amount of time allowing light to strike a photosensitive medium long enough for a picture to be captured.  Until the digital revolution this was done using wet plate colloid or film – processes which were slow and expensive and required a lot of chemistry.  My first SLR was a Canon Rebel 35mm film camera, but all I knew about shooting back then was to leave the camera on auto and pay a little extra to get my film developed at Wolf Camera instead of K-Mart.  Digital let me play a lot more and learn a lot more though, about the process of photography and how to take a photo.  Now, I’m going back a little bit to film and playing with it a little more now that I better know how to make a good photo.  My film camera is still a Canon Rebel 35mm SLR.  It’s not the same one that used to have, but pretty similar.  I picked this one up a yard sale with two lenses for a total of $20 – not too shabby.  Since I shoot Canon digital I can still use my good lenses on this film camera and it has the same look and feel, as far as use goes.

We’re pretty lucky here in Nashville to have a great and very friendly group of photographers who are always willing to meet up, hang out, and take some pictures.  There’s a flourishing group here in town that has gone back to shooting mostly film for their professional work even.  I’m not there and doubt I ever will be – I still like shooting digital too much.  Still, a couple of days before my birthday last month, a few of Nashville’s film shooters got together for a Film Photo Walk in East Nashville.  A couple of models and some mild, sunny winter weather were a good combination for a great photo walk.

Details: Models: Charity Vance, Rae Marshal, Katy Bishop; Camera = Canon EOS Rebel X 35mm SLR; Lens = Canon 35 mm/f1.4L; Color film = Kodak Portra 400, B&W film = Kodak Tri-X 400, both shot at box ISO with +1 EV; processing and scanning by Film Box Lab in Nashville.