When I got home from Cuba in February Alex let me test out her Pentax 645n and I fuckiinnnggg loveddd ittttt. I wanted a 645 format camera and shooting that camera gave me just the drive to sell my square format, mirror image, manual focus, waistfinder, Rolleflex.
The Rolleiflex started feeling “off” in Cuba, ill-fitting. Too long, too slow, too reverential, too precious, lack mindsety somehow? Restriction where once there was school.
I’ve been “sitting with” the Rollei in the same way herbalists and psychonauts “sit with” tinctures or mushrooms and selling it to move in another direction was a kind of graduation/integration from a self-guided deep dive film school.
As my film fluency increased I became aware of how much the square was cramping my style….the slownesssssss my god- let’s move on!
Going from loooots of control, shooting super slow in Rollei town to popping in a roll, seeing in portrait orientation and letting the camera “make” all shutter and aperture choices is grit teeth joy emoji rollercoaster.
I wanted to offer a project that would get me shooting intensely so I could feel into how I work as a photographer in this season of life, with this new camera (we’re in love), to see if close up filters solve my desire to be closecloseclose and dialed into the details, and to play with friends.
So I announced Lemme See…
The sessions feel free, affirming, observation and creative-forward. I was so glad that Sadie wanted to make portraits together for Lemme See. She’s a soul friend and together we’re wild, many tabs open, art talk, hearts in flux and always have a great time talk-play-cry-laugh-creating.
Perfect.
She built an Alice in Wonderland vignette in the tall grass of a June morning with her illustrated art pottery all around her, hair in the light, grasshoppers on bending stems.
When we wrapped up I wanted to make portraits of her with the Russian Olives, slow shutter, hair in the wind so I switched to black and white film (Delta 3200)
Not sure how, but my camera was set to F22 giving an affect of the entire scene sharp and in focus….
NOT what I wanted.
Here’s how they turned out: (click to expand em)
They’re wild, the wind blew, they feel abstracty wind centric light biding her holy hair. The grain is the main character and they feel out of time. The mountains in focus, the trees so pronounced are a new look for me that I’d never have chosen.
And when I noticed my settings (shooting automatic has its consequences) I had one shot left on the roll.
I slowed down, insisted, and we made this:
This frame was made of a million elements cherry topped with insistence and last-minute noticing. It exists in the context of the F22 frames that came before it where an unconscious twist was in everything. It’s on a roll with images that were made, not the ones that I thought I was making but the ones that are.
We’ve got just a few frames of chemical and light. Reduced to materiality that’s all this is. But the meaning making invokes a thousand elementals, a million poems.
When I shoot film, I shoot more. Its edited, spare quality demands and offers a lot to me, for me, through me. And the images that turn out, and the ones that are what they are, are totally out of my control.
Film notes:
Film- Kodak Gold 200 and Delta Ilford 3200 medium format film
Camera- Pentax 645N
Film rating & development notes-
Kodak Gold: Box rated the film, set my light meter to ISO 200 and “push” the film 1 stop in developing (+1)
Expired Delta 3200: Rated at 1000.
Developing and Scanning Standard Scans at The Find Lab Film Scan and Development: https://thefindlab.com/