I’ve had a small pile of undeveloped film rolls stacking up for about nine months, and I finally took them all in to get developed.
There were both color and black and white rolls, which I’d shot using a Yashica MicroTec Zoom 120 since just before I went to Oaxaca back in June 2018. I had picked up some Lomography Color Negative 800 film specifically for that trip because Oaxaca lends itself to color photography much more than to black and white (if you’ve been, you know what I mean), and I was looking for a film versatile enough for any light, and which pushed saturation and contrast a little bit — the Lomography 800 is designed to do all of that. I had a roll of Kodak T-Max 400 in the camera when I landed in Oaxaca, so snapped a handful of black and white film images there. The other few rolls of the T-Max I had were shot in and around the Bay throughout my day-to-day over the following months.
Anyway… Out of eight rolls of film that I had developed and scanned, I got back 25 or 30 photos that aren’t garbage, of those I might really stand behind 10 of them. (Maybe.)
When I think about the ratio of “good ones” to actual film burned, I instinctively start to think about the cost of all this — film (especially having the negatives scanned at a quality that I’m happy working with in Lightroom) isn’t cheap. I’m not planning on getting myself a quality scanner any time soon (not a part of my lifestyle at this point), but it’s not like I shoot a ton of film anyway.
But also, and perhaps more importantly, for me photography is not about the material and mechanical costs of making photographs, it’s about the results. Frankly, I’m pretty happy to get 10 photos that I actually kinda like from a couple hundred shots. Good photos are rare, great photos are damn near impossible. (It’s one of several reasons why I predominantly shoot digital — the digital realm is a lot more forgiving to experimentation, mundanity and downright failure.)
Ultimately, this is a creative outlet, which I see as less of an expense than an investment in my sanity, and mental and spiritual heath. Hell, if cost was the overriding issue, I wouldn’t be in a band (gear costs money, and rehearsal space rent isn’t free) or train at the gym (membership fees and boxing gear doesn’t pay for itself).
What’s more, photography isn’t the slightest bit profitable (neither are music or boxing), it’s something I do for myself, and while it’s technically an expense, like music and boxing, it’s not so prohibitively expensive as to offset the value to my health and wellbeing.
As such, the only thing I expect from my effort is eventual improvement — a better photograph (a tighter performance, a cleaner and meaner punch with correct form). But it doesn’t come easy, and so — and this is the key part, as I’ve always felt this way about anything that can be considered art — it’s important to remember that it’s more about the process than the product. Truly, any result worth preserving or remembering is one that comes from practice and refined processes, and should be preserved as much for the learning opportunity as for the bragging rights.
Incidentally, this line of thought has lead me to rethink this website a bit. I’m wondering if I’ve been focusing too much on quantity — there’s not a ton of work on this site, but still, I’m increasingly of the mind that it needs a culling and an organizational rethink. I still plan to post to the blog as often as I can, and though my bar for what constitutes a good photo is slightly lower on the blog than I feel it should be when it comes to the site galleries, my initial intention to post weekly only stands up under the assumption that I’m making enough photos in a week to produce at least one good one. That’s not always the case, and I don’t like forcing it. So my renewed goal is to post as often as possible — that’s all. But I’ve got new some images forthcoming, too, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, here’s a gallery with a few photos from the batch of film photos that I recently had developed. Some are from my trip to Oaxaca, and also appear in the gallery containing all my Oaxaca photos.
