I interrupt this autumn for a look back at the last day that the kids and I went to the beach in RI on a nice warm September day.
I recently got two more rolls of film back from the darkroom and I was reminded of this quote…
“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works;
if from the head, almost nothing.”
~Marc Changall
These rolls of film reminded me of this quote because I find that when I shoot a roll of film, the process of setting up the camera, putting in the film, making sure it is advancing by placing my ear to the back of the camera and listening very closely…. all brings the process of shooting images closer to my heart. I shoot with my grandfather’s old Nikon F2. A big heavy silver and black camera with a broken light meter. I have to cross reference with my digital camera for a light reading and then sometime also add the element of an educated guess, if for example I am shooting 50 speed film, as my digital only goes down to 100 speed. But still I love to shoot with this camera. I can only shoot images close to my heart though, only images that I love so much and yet still risk loosing, in the case that the film did not advance
as I had thought, or the light reading was just off… I recently shot a whole roll on Chris’s birthday, only to find that the film was not in well, and did not advance. I was very sad, and lamented this loss of images for days. I really loved one of the kids looking at paintings in the art museum, and the one of the kids and Chris hiking at Amethyst Brook… But that is the understanding with film, and you can’t recreate life… So those images are only stored in my head. Each time I load an old film camera, each shot I set up and take with film, is shot from the heart, and with the understanding that the image may or may not be there….. So it is with a very joyful heart that I share these images, the images that did get burned into film……
The color photos from the beach are shot with my Nikonos Range finder with Ektar 100 film. The Autumn leaf photos are shot with the Nikon F2 with Portra 400 film.
