Last year my husband and I impulse purchased one of those half frame 35mm cameras that the kids are so mad about these days. No real reason behind it, just that we were on vacation and thought it would be fun to document our trip non-digitally.
I had no artistic expectations from this device, just thought it would be a cute little thing we did and then gave up on, but after having played with it for a little over 5 months, I have… thoughts!
At the forefront is really just the fact that it is fun to use. Plastic cameras na hindi wysiwyg? Fun. Surprise flashbang over dinner? Annoying, and yet somehow still fun. Don’t know what a roll will produce? Potentially wasteful and financially irresponsible yet of course obviously super fun.
I like to think i approach personal photography somewhat similarly, especially on my phone, where it’s less about “getting it right” and more just about getting “it”, if that makes sense.
I enjoy that because there are minimal controls on a plastic toy camera there is less onus on me to have to “do things properly”. There is a lot of relief in the lack of control, especially as someone who now mostly works in controlled lighting setups, where everything is done on purpose. Leave me alone, i can just take pictures because I noticed stuff!
I also think that a lot of the fun of playing with film comes from producing images that somehow look like they are from 1993 — I was alive in 1993 and have photographs that look like this from when I was a kid, so the romance kinda eludes me, maybe the equivalent for millennials was having our photos taken with a 4×5 or on wet plates? I had a wet plate portrait taken when I was in grad school and still treasure the print!
No, I don’t think i’m all that interested in nostalgia as a concept, I’m not very sentimental. I do enjoy serendipity though, happy accidents and some unhappy ones too lbr. Plastic cameras lend themselves well to that process, scrubbing through weird unreadable images to find the one good one in the roll is a great way to spend an afternoon.
Having said that – the one thing I do get kind of obsessive about when it comes to all this film shit is scanning. I have tried to have my film scanned by the stores that also process the film and I’m sorry to report that I have been mostly unhappy with the quality. It always comes back soooo grainy, and without much room to recover under or overexposed images because they turn everything over in JPEG, and it’s just… yeah, i’d rather do it myself.
Sadly, my flatbed film scanner committed sudoku right in the middle of scanning one of my first few rolls, so … uh, I kinda have to live with wonky shop scanning in the meantime. I don’t really see a way forward in terms of repairing it, i’ve had it for about 10 years and every technician i spoke to has never seen this model before, so I guess it’s just a goner. I know flatbed is not really standard for film scanners anymore but I really did enjoy that device. I teach my students not to disregard scanners as photographic devices, I think they have so much utility and can produce photographs just as much as a fancy digital camera can; I would also use mine for digitizing the prints my restoration clients send me, so I am debating just getting another one.
When I have money, lmao. Whenever that is.
Anyway unless otherwise indicated though everything in this post was scanned by me (which is why they are covered in dust, i cannot actually be bothered to clean spots).
I bought a few rolls of novelty film, and also remembered i had some ultra mega turbo expired Superia in my vault. I definitely bought these in the early 2010s, then already expired, for about 100php a roll at a going-out-of-business sale in Baguio.
Most of the expired Superia has come out cloudy and underexposed; expiration dates on rolls impact film sensitivity, so it’s mostly shit. But again – serendipity! Out of three rolls so far I think about 1 in 5 images are actually exposed somewhat legibly.
I also found an undeveloped roll from 2014 when I did my graduate internship in Madridejos with Martha Atienza. I definitely exposed these in an SLR because they are pretty precisely framed, also I recall having access to a real film camera back in those days.
I found some interesting images on the roll though! Like look at these bike boys!
I am realizing that I kept promising I’d go back to Bantayan island way back when, but have never gotten the chance to. Covid was still 6 years later, so there was still around 4 years between my internship and me moving back to Manila that I never got to go back. I did end up sending prints of my portraits of the women I worked with over there though, so that’s something. I wonder if those folks would still remember me.
This mystery roll of film also had sat undeveloped for something like 10 years after being exposed, it was just languishing at the bottom of a drawer, so I did have to spend quite a bit of time interpreting where the heck these were from when the roll was first developed. Other than my memory of taking them there aren’t many indicators of what and where I photographed these things, so I’m glad I didn’t wait longer to have it developed, otherwise I might have completely forgotten that I even took these.
In terms of, for lack of a better word, “utility” i also like that there really isn’t much I can do with these images other than appreciate them for what they are, and share them with friends and family. For me, at least at this point, I don’t think there is a “project” here, I don’t look at these images in terms of how they can advance my career or expand my portfolio. It’s pretty similar to how I photograph with my phone, except there is a bit more of an involved process attached, and it does cost actual cash moneys to engage in this practice.
idk, it’s kinda nice. It is costly but it relieves me of thinking about artsy bullshit and lets me be silly and playful. Maybe when I’ve accumulated enough of these that I find striking, i’ll be able to “put together a body of work” but honestly at this point I’m very much not interested. I just want to play, i want toy, i like fun, he he he.
Anyway not to say any of these insights about film are new, noteworthy or groundbreaking. I learned to use a camera when I was 10 years old so using film isn’t new to me, but i think approaching it from what is ostensibly a career in digital photography feels interesting and different, kind of like learning to use watercolors after learning to paint on Procreate. Mostly I consider my photographic practice to have started 20 years ago with a Casio Exilim – digitally, so for all intents and purposes I’m a digital native to photography. I haven’t in my career photographed with film as frequently as I have in the past five months, probably not since I was in graduate school taking a black and white course, and even then never for for personal stuff. So in a way, my appreciation of film is pretty new, and I also think my career in digital photography is necessary for me to have gotten here.
I’m not naturally a technical photographer, it takes effort for me to remember or pay attention to things like my settings, my equipment, my technique, etc. Of course I have learned to do it for work, and of course I recognize why it’s important, and it has benefitted my images for the most part. But if none of that mattered I’d still be taking pictures even using the most rudimentary non-fancy bullshit imaginable and still be having a grand old time.
Anyway so that’s what’s up with me, this is what I’ve been playing around with. And yes I have a whole other side of my harddrive that’s just work photos, digital photos, technical photos, controlled lighting and educational work — i still think that’s all important. In recent months I’ve been trying to do this thing where I share art, or my artistic impulses go outward (whatever that means or looks like to me), at least 1x a month, in a way that isn’t school-related, and this month I thought I would write again on this here blog. Mostly because I am reluctant to share art on any of the big platforms anymore due to, you know, The Thing That Eats Art, but at least it means this blog gets somewhat revived, which I am glad for! You know 2013 Sandra would be glad to see that setting this up wasn’t for nothing.
I’m mostly okay, on most days I am actually very happy with my job and happy with my work. There are just seasons where I need to distract myself from the fact that academia is a hole and it is the hole in which I will probably die, and that is pretty distressing.
In any event, I hope you are all having a decent 2025, condemning genocide where you can, and pushing for liberation in all directions. Peace!
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