Unpretentious film photography in digital age

[Alan Edward Klein]

Not having a darkroom because of space limitations, I'm forced to develop b&w rolls as slides, with mixed results. It's fun, interesting and the outcome is much like having them printed on paper, except there's the hassle of setting up the projector and projecting screen.

I've scanned my slides and show them digitally on my 75" TV by using a video program complete with music, credits etc. You could burn it on a CD or DVD or put it on a memory card like I do now. It turns on in seconds before your guests claim a headache to go home early. Very convenient. These came from Ektachrome slides shot 30 years ago.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Photographing what is currently mundane is a tough task. However we have what to look back on and know that it'll be worth it. Someone going out with a roll and stroll in 1950 maybe didn't have snapshots of their grandfather horsing around. They had some formal pictures. If I dig through my family archives from the 60's-90's I can see what will be interesting in a few years and see if I can capture it. I wonder if my grandkids will be upset that everything I'm taking photos of is in B&W or weird color.

Too bad, at least there are photos.

I'm, sitting on my wife's father's 8mm film, forty three 50 foot rolls of them on vacation all over plus movies of my wife and her sister. I've got to get them digitalized but just haven't done it. They've got to be 60+ years old.

 

[miha]

What do you guys think about Richard Billingham's photography? The pinnacle of the mundane?

https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...ingham-tower-block-white-dee-rays-a-laugh-liz

http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/billingham.shtml

 

[Helge]

The special art of taking a good mundane photo is called being a competent photographer. Anything can be interesting. Then again, eye of the beholder etc and etc.

Not at all. Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Winogrand etc. showed how to do it.
Other photographers like Ansel Adams, Cindy Sherman or Robert Mapplethorpe wouldn’t be caught dead doing it, or really know how to approach the mundane.

It takes a certain detached post modern sensibility.
And it also takes a different kind of guts and a special kind of perseverance to succeed.

Family snapshots very easily end up staged or stilted. Even if you think you’re loose.

 

[Cholentpot]

I'm, sitting on my wife's father's 8mm film, forty three 50 foot rolls of them on vacation all over plus movies of my wife and her sister. I've got to get them digitalized but just haven't done it. They've got to be 60+ years old.

I've got a few rolls that were smuggled out of Soviet Russia. I need to get them digitized but ya know...money and time and stuff.

What do you guys think about Richard Billingham's photography? The pinnacle of the mundane?

https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...ingham-tower-block-white-dee-rays-a-laugh-liz

http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/billingham.shtml

I wouldn't have the guts to share the dark side of my life. Good work though.

Not at all. Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Winogrand etc. showed how to do it.
Other photographers like Ansel Adams, Cindy Sherman or Robert Mapplethorpe wouldn’t be caught dead doing it, or really know how to approach the mundane.

It takes a certain detached post modern sensibility.
And it also takes a different kind of guts and a special kind of perseverance to succeed.

Family snapshots very easily end up staged or stilted. Even if you think you’re loose.

Gotta think like a kid and have a camera handy. I really dislike on camera flash, however I've learned it's a necessary when chasing the kids and most of the winter season is spent indoors in gloomy light. Embrace the look. Winter is for point and shoots.

 

[Helge]

I've got a few rolls that were smuggled out of Soviet Russia. I need to get them digitized but ya know...money and time and stuff.



I wouldn't have the guts to share the dark side of my life. Good work though.



Gotta think like a kid and have a camera handy. I really dislike on camera flash, however I've learned it's a necessary when chasing the kids and most of the winter season is spent indoors in gloomy light. Embrace the look. Winter is for point and shoots.

I usually just put some wireless flashguns at the midpoint or corners of the room, or if possible in the lamps, and try to shoot with them behind me or shoot below them.
Gives very nice results.
Especially if you dial them down and use as long exposures as you dare.

 

[Cholentpot]

I usually just put some wireless flashguns at the midpoint or corners of the room, or if possible in the lamps, and try to shoot with them behind me or shoot below them.
Gives very nice results.
Especially if you dial them down and use as long exposures as you dare.

My kids would tear any setup apart. Curiosity has it's ups and downs.

 

[Helge]

My kids would tear any setup apart. Curiosity has it's ups and downs.

Place them out of reach. It takes planning but it’s worth it.
You could also just use bounce flash.
Almost anything is better than direct flash indoors.

 

[Cholentpot]

Place them out of reach. It takes planning but it’s worth it.
You could also just use bounce flash.
Almost anything is better than direct flash indoors.

Good idea worth looking into. I might do this for the holidays.

 

[blockend]

What do you guys think about Richard Billingham's photography? The pinnacle of the mundane?

The reason Billingham's work is acclaimed, is because very few people with access to that lifestyle are recording it. In that sense it's far from mundane, even though it happens almost everywhere.
Other people work in a snapshot idiom who are far from snap shooters. Chris Shaw (Life as a Night Porter) and Bertien van Manen's photos in eastern Europe after the fall of Berlin wall, for example.

 

[Prest_400]

Yes and no. Have a mju I P&S which is nice EDC to take snaps with.
I take it along for BW snaps intended to print. Now, working and commuting, I haven't kept up with my backlog and not printed too much of the snapshot work, am more intentional.

 

[Bill Burk]

I’m also right in middle of the process of printing all my kid’s everyday life moments from the last 12 years. I’m about 5000 prints so far, size ranging from 3.5x5 to 5x7. 50-60 prints a day, everyday.

It’s fun, relaxing and truly rewarding.

Wow so cool. When did you start doing 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 ? I thought you were a dedicated 35mm photographer.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

With everyone using their smartphones to take the odd snap of their surrounding, I wonder, does anyone here take ordinary snaps on film, develop AND make darkroom prints on a regular basis, put prints in albums and have a look at them from time to time..., like so many amateur photographers of decades ago?
No "art", big format, etc. prints, just unpretentious, album-size prints of everyday life, and stuff/people one finds interesting and worthwhile photographing?

what are snaps?

 

[Helge]

what are snaps?

Snapshots?

 

[NB23]

Wow so cool. When did you start doing 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 ? I thought you were a dedicated 35mm photographer.

There has always been a few medium format cameras in my collection, ever since I started. The ratio was 1:20 vs 35mm but within the last 3 years it has steadily grown to be about 50/50.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I usually just put some wireless flashguns at the midpoint or corners of the room, or if possible in the lamps, and try to shoot with them behind me or shoot below them.
Gives very nice results.
Especially if you dial them down and use as long exposures as you dare.

I tend to do the same thing. Stick a speed light behind the TV pointing up at the ceiling, and at least one more in the main floor standing room light pointing up at the ceiling. Adding a couple hundred combined watt seconds between 2-3 speed lights does wonders. You can even get those super cheap little slave units the screw into light bulb sockets then dial your on camera flash all the way down and just use it to trigger the other slave lights. It only needs to be bright enough to trigger one of them, once it pops, it’ll trigger the rest. For a very small amount of money, you can dramatically improve indoor lighting.

 

[Helge]

I tend to do the same thing. Stick a speed light behind the TV pointing up at the ceiling, and at least one more in the main floor standing room light pointing up at the ceiling. Adding a couple hundred combined watt seconds between 2-3 speed lights does wonders. You can even get those super cheap little slave units the screw into light bulb sockets then dial your on camera flash all the way down and just use it to trigger the other slave lights. It only needs to be bright enough to trigger one of them, once it pops, it’ll trigger the rest. For a very small amount of money, you can dramatically improve indoor lighting.

Yeah, thanks. Of course it should be bounced. Forgot to mention that.

I didn’t know that wireless bulb flashes existed!
That’s really cool!
Do you recommend any especially?

It’s like the old days where flashbulbs would have an E27 socket for somewhat the same reason.
Also the reason why Bulb mode is called that.
You turned on the “light” in a dark(ish) room with the shutter open.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Yeah, thanks. Of course it should be bounced. Forgot to mention that.

I didn’t know that wireless bulb flashes existed!
That’s really cool!
Do you recommend any especially?

It’s like the old days where flashbulbs would have an E27 socket for somewhat the same reason.
Also the reason why Bulb mode is called that.
You turned on the “light” in a dark(ish) room with the shutter open.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Slave-Strobes-AC-DC/ci/1239

I use the Impact brand ones. Basically $20 per, screws into a light socket, if it sees any other flashes fire, it fires. If you do a lot of real estate photography, these things are gold for shooting interiors. Just go through each room and replace most of the light bulbs with these. The room is instantly lit with light that looks like what it would look like with the normal lights, but you can typically shoot at a much faster shutter speed and deeper depth of field.

It also works for just general indoors photography. Have one or two light sockets in the room populated with one of these, then fire it with a little pop of light from your on camera flash.

 

[miha]

The reason Billingham's work is acclaimed, is because very few people with access to that lifestyle are recording it. In that sense it's far from mundane, even though it happens almost everywhere.
Other people work in a snapshot idiom who are far from snap shooters. Chris Shaw (Life as a Night Porter) and Bertien van Manen's photos in eastern Europe after the fall of Berlin wall, for example.

Sadly most of us know or knew someone with such lifestyle but did not dare or did not want to record it for obvious reasons. Thanks for mentioning Bertien van Manen which I didn't know before.

 

[Helge]

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Slave-Strobes-AC-DC/ci/1239

I use the Impact brand ones. Basically $20 per, screws into a light socket, if it sees any other flashes fire, it fires. If you do a lot of real estate photography, these things are gold for shooting interiors. Just go through each room and replace most of the light bulbs with these. The room is instantly lit with light that looks like what it would look like with the normal lights, but you can typically shoot at a much faster shutter speed and deeper depth of field.

It also works for just general indoors photography. Have one or two light sockets in the room populated with one of these, then fire it with a little pop of light from your on camera flash.

Thanks! That seems quite powerful if GN rating is real.
Put some layers of Congo Blue gel or IR filter over the trigger flash to take it out of the equation.
The photocell of the slaves normally looks mainly for the IR content of the flash.

 

[VinceInMT]

I used film to document everything, especially my kids’ younger years. I shot B&W and did the darkroom thing but then we moved to another state, added a career change, and my wife and I shot color negs and had them printed at the drug store. Once the kids were a bit older I got the darkroom set up in the basement and both kids learned to shoot, develop, and print film. It didn’t really grab them but at least they learned it. When digital came along I started using it for the snapshot stuff but still use the darkroom for my artsy endeavors.

I thought it was important to teach the kids stuff I found important, not because they needed to know it but because I wanted them to know it was important to me. We didn’t watch much TV but they had full access to my old time radio show collection. Both learned to drive a car with a manual transmission. The younger one took to auto mechanics and we spent lots of time working on my vintage cars. The old one took an interest in computers and I taught him to program when he was 12. He’s now a software engineer with a big company now (think of a type of fruit.)

To them, to sit through the page turning of a photo album with all the stories that would result would be too painful. They’d rather scroll on a screen. That’s not a bad thing, just different.

 

[warden]

I used film to document everything, especially my kids’ younger years. I shot B&W and did the darkroom thing but then we moved to another state, added a career change, and my wife and I shot color negs and had them printed at the drug store. Once the kids were a bit older I got the darkroom set up in the basement and both kids learned to shoot, develop, and print film. It didn’t really grab them but at least they learned it. When digital came along I started using it for the snapshot stuff but still use the darkroom for my artsy endeavors.

I thought it was important to teach the kids stuff I found important, not because they needed to know it but because I wanted them to know it was important to me. We didn’t watch much TV but they had full access to my old time radio show collection. Both learned to drive a car with a manual transmission. The younger one took to auto mechanics and we spent lots of time working on my vintage cars. The old one took an interest in computers and I taught him to program when he was 12. He’s now a software engineer with a big company now (think of a type of fruit.)

To them, to sit through the page turning of a photo album with all the stories that would result would be too painful. They’d rather scroll on a screen. That’s not a bad thing, just different.

Two thumbs up to all of that.

 

[Cholentpot]

I used film to document everything, especially my kids’ younger years. I shot B&W and did the darkroom thing but then we moved to another state, added a career change, and my wife and I shot color negs and had them printed at the drug store. Once the kids were a bit older I got the darkroom set up in the basement and both kids learned to shoot, develop, and print film. It didn’t really grab them but at least they learned it. When digital came along I started using it for the snapshot stuff but still use the darkroom for my artsy endeavors.

I thought it was important to teach the kids stuff I found important, not because they needed to know it but because I wanted them to know it was important to me. We didn’t watch much TV but they had full access to my old time radio show collection. Both learned to drive a car with a manual transmission. The younger one took to auto mechanics and we spent lots of time working on my vintage cars. The old one took an interest in computers and I taught him to program when he was 12. He’s now a software engineer with a big company now (think of a type of fruit.)

To them, to sit through the page turning of a photo album with all the stories that would result would be too painful. They’d rather scroll on a screen. That’s not a bad thing, just different.

Banana?

I'm at the stage where I'm teaching my kids to read and ride a bike. Dad is not weird yet, Dad is fun and loudness.

 

[Cloudy]

When I was at uni and for a few years after then I used to take snapshots with my Olympus Mju II ALL THE TIME. I never printed the snapshots because I didn't have the time and money to do so, but it's nice now to look back.

I also did a family album for a photography project with pictures of my friends, but it wasn't all film.

 

[SchwinnParamount]

I avoid the use of my phone for snaps if I have anything else handy. Given that I usually carry around a range finder, SLR, or DSLR, only the rare snap happens on the phone. And anyway, I really have no respect for those tiny phone camera lenses. I like Serious Glass and try to keep it handy. For printing, I am afraid I reserve my enlarger, trays, and chemicals for the occasional print that I would eventually hang on a wall. After contact printing my negatives, the best ones (that aren't worthy of hanging) get scanned and put into db on one of my external USB drives. Once in a while, I will put something on Flikr. I haven't figured out how to get my flatbed scanner to produce really great scans of my prints for uploading to the Apug (uh, Photrio) gallery.