my photolosophy 📸

I've loved taking photos since I was a kid and my grandfather Harold gave me a tiny "spy camera" from Sharper Image (was going to say RIP, but it looks like it's still around). I'm not sure if it was actually this mini-shot, but it was something similar, and I loved that I could keep it in my pocket.

I also loved that 110 film was so easy to load, I was not then, nor am I now what you might call a "technically adept" person or someone you'd describe as "good with his hands." In case you think I'm just being self-depricating, in college I once loaded a movie camera with the film facing the wrong way. The whole short film came out looking orange and washed out and my professor seemed actually impressed that I was able to load the camera that backwards. This was not my only analog film related mishap in college- anyone who knows me knows this sad tale. The night of our senior film screenings my thesis film got snagged in the projector and a whole theater watched the celluloid tear and melt right there on the big screen. Not only did that launch a lifetime of screening-related anxiety for me, but the medium of analog film as a whole became my personal nemesis. I also cast blame on Isabella Rossellini for some reason, because she happened to be meeting with the head of the film department, Jeanine Basinger that same night and everyone felt that if Jeanine had been there it wouldn't have happened. Lucky for me I was entering my career in film and TV at a time when digital was taking over everything, from ultra portable DV cameras to non-linear editing programs like Final Cut Pro.

I wanted this Sony vx1000 so bad back in the day

The digital revolution has been generally good for me and my technical ineptitude. In retrospect I'm glad I got some basic understanding of the analog tools back in the '90s but I don't feel nostalgic for loading film cameras or editing film on flatbeds. It was really difficult and slow and I was bad at it.

I'm honestly shocked I ever learned to use this thing.

Lately though I've been getting back into some analog photography because I am nostalgic for the days of shooting a roll of film, dropping it off for processing, then waiting to see the images a few days later once they're done. I also love going to Samy's Camera on Fairfax and seeing all of the framed stills they have along the staircase, each one shot by a legendary cinematographer.

Photo by Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC. He shot Lethal Weapon! I bet Mel Gibson didn't like him very much.

So the last couple years I've been getting some analog film camera's off of ebay, a couple point and shoots and one Canon SLR from the early 80's. I've been inspired by the analog camera collection of my bff/documentary muse/digital media legend Matt Stopera. Here are a few of my favorite 35mm scans from recent trips and walks around the neighborhood:

So, I promised my photolosophy with the title of this post, so here it is. What works for me is that I love the look of film, for stills and movies and enjoy taking 35mm photos when I can. But I also embrace the freedom and immediacy of digital both for fun and for work. I spend the majority of my time at work editing on Adobe Premiere and obviously no one is ever going back to cutting film on a flatbed ever again. A couple years ago we even had Isabella Rossellini as a guest voice on the show I was working on, Human Resources. I think it was time I forgave her for something that completely was not her fault...and was thankful not to be editing her dialog on magnetic tape.