Launching a hang glider from McCarty's Bluff, Rising Fawn, Georgia.
Clarence Spindler and his Rock City barn. U.S, Highway 41, Gibson County, Indiana.
Goat herder, rural Bulgaria.
What do the above photographs have in common?
Answer: they are all scans from film originals.
I've been a photographer for 55 years. For the first 35 of those years I shot film. And although I've done some significant work (to me, at least) since then, including a few books, I consider those years with film the best and most significant years of my career. It was those years spent practicing the discipline of film that made me the photographer I am.
What did the discipline of film teach me?
First, it taught me to get it right in the camera. Not to shoot and hope that I could fix it later in Photoshop.
Second, it taught me to make every shot count. Film wasn't as expensive then as it is now, but it still wasn't cheap.
Third, it taught me to work each situation until I was sure I had something good before I moved on.
Fourth, it taught me to be very precise in my exposure technique. Slide film has, at most, a half-stop latitude for over-exposure and maybe one stop for under-exposure. Most of the time I metered each situation with an incident meter, which measures the light falling on the subject, rather than the light reflected from the subject, as your in-camera meter does, and I then bracketed a half-stop over and under that reading.
Although I shoot digital now because it's easy and each exposure is essentially free (and because I'm maybe getting a bit lazy in my old age), the discipline of film still serves me well. In fact, what I seek to do with each of my digital photographs is to make them look as if they had originated on film. Because that's the look I prefer.
About the equipment: The hang-gliding scene and the Bulgarian goat herder were photographed with Olympus OM system film cameras. I used Kodak Ektachrome film for the hang-gliding and Fujichrome 100D for the goat herder. For Clarence Spindler, I used a Canon EOS A2, Fujichrome, and a light amber filter. All film was 35mm.
Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia
are available for $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal
address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943
Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how
you would like your book inscribed.
If you would like to have a print of any of my photographs, check out my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/ If you don't find what you want there, let me know and I'll arrange to include it in the gallery.
Photography and text copyright 2024 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
