film of all kinds

Film has been a consistent theme in a few of the random things that have interested me lately. Just before I left for Italy last month, I'd really began to appreciate again film cameras. The novelty of digital is starting to wear on me, and knowing I can take endless photos with no consequence and seeing way too many hacked Photoshop jobs...the careful selection, luck, anticipation, and even mystery in actual tangible film intrigues me once again. When I took photography in school, it was on an old manual Nikon with b/w studies in the darkroom. I mainly just got frustrated and didn't take it seriously, then was ready to "get on with it" when digital got popular. I've had a good run, but alas am ready to experiment.


Enjoying the instant gratification of the Polaroid recently has been fun, and with a lot of the film bearing dates long expired, the results are very mixed. Plus, I'm borrowing a friend's vintage half-frame camera now to try it out. (Flickr Half-Frame samples) But after being introduced to the magic that is a Holga, I'm so excited to get my very own and start working on some medium format. Light leaks, double exposure, natural vignetting, plastic lens scratches are all what is fun about film to me...not something to avoid with digital. I like not knowing exactly what I'll get...and I'm a lot more thoughtful at the images I choose to capture. We'll see what becomes of this new interest...hopefully I'll have some fun summer images to share.

Next.

Old classic movies. This was a random occurrence a couple of weeks ago, when I was really in the mood to watch some vintage, so we looked up the AFI Best 100 and got started. We've already nailed down a good handful, and Hitchcock is up there on the list. I've watched his films before, and we even own a couple...but all that came to mind was the annoying school children singing "hiplety-hoplety-now-now-now" over and over in The Birds. (Seriously, I have no idea what the words are to that song, but it's sounds like that gibberish to me, and would get stuck in my head for days after watching it). ...but, I must say that most of his films age so well and are pretty genius in many ways.

I'm usually prefer to see movies outside the theatre, but think I definitely have to make it for the 3D showing of Pixar's new film Up as I've heard rave reviews over and over and over...so here's the trailer, and I hope to see it soon.


One more.

Super into Passion Pit right now...Sleepyhead gets played back to back (sometimes cheating and starting at around the 1:19 mark)...slowly compiling my Summer '09 mix. Although it's music, and not film, the film that was produced to go along with the music is quite interesting. Enjoy (and happy June!)