The past few days in Philadelphia can be described as hot, sultry, humid…sticky with minor drops of perspiration. But I don’t fight it, as I just go with the flow. Out of the depths of this sultriness comes an opportunity to stay inside and work on what I label as just the back-end-of-things. This includes …. film developing and ‘orchestrating’ one of my upcoming zines.
I usually always have a roll or two to develop. Yet today I didn’t have two of the same film type as I prefer to develop several at the same time. So that left creating the beginnings of my new Zine. Using Affinity I ‘started’ by determining the layout and size for my zine based upon half-frame negatives. I needed the right size to properly project how the half-frame negatives of my Pen F will fit onto each page. Now, this zine project won’t be completed until early 2025 I imagine. You see, I have a couple of dates I need to ‘shoot’ to be included in this documentary zine regarding an open art studio event gallery. I still have Oct, Nov and maybe December to document. But today, I began looking at some footage from June.
‘Above”….. An interesting shot…and one I ‘like’…I enjoy the film look….the grain/noise and especially the extra mood added by shooting half-frame + 400 Fomapan. I love the end result. A candid shot of a lady digging thru her purse. Some art in the background….and her just sitting crossed-leg on a bench. Totally un-aware of being captured on a negative. This is one of several I took of her as I formed a small visual narrative of this ‘slice of life’.
Another shot….this one being more associated with a regular diptych. Again, candid shots documenting this same event. Notice the water mark from the film processing I did on the left image. I left it there. Sure, I can clean it up but why? Why not add character unique to my process to my images? This is what I mean by why I love film. Collectively and thru-out the entire process of capturing an image to that of developing or even printing an image just adds a bit of ‘me’ to each shot.
Tomorrow….should be cooler and not sultry and sticky and me being shamefully relegated to the indoors. Tomorrow has hopes of being out there, about….walking….’legwork’ from the beginning stages.