Perfect Imperfection | Seattle Film Photography

March 13, 2012January 14, 2016Leave a comment

Hooray for analog! I finally got around to the long (although not quite arduous) process of getting my medium format film prints into their new square photo album this afternoon. Having the prints in a square format (some 5 inch square, some 4) makes them automatically special, but it’s the getting them there and into a real live, not-on-the-computer, album that makes it all so extra special.

Taking photos on film, in any format, involves you in such a different process from that of digital photography, and until I got my Diana F+ a few Christmases ago, I’d mostly left film photography behind for some time. Back when I was working on feature films, I had basically become a film snob, and would abhor anything that would be shot on anything but 35mm celluloid, for the process and production values at the time when working with film, just magnified a project to further greatness. Everyone has now gone digital in the lands of both professional photography and film-making but there are signs everywhere of nostalgia for those mediums; there has been a resurgence in what is called the ‘analog lifestyle’; go see http://www.lomography.com/ if you want to see how the Lomo movement has taken off with and grab every cool camera to do so with. And funnily enough, every camera app on your iPhone wants to replicate film, to get the look and feel of its simplicity, its unsuspecting colors and its element of surprise. I love using the phone apps but they don’t truly represent the process of taking photos on film, getting them developed and into your hot little hands, where they were highly anticipated for so long (usually the next day, actually). You had to make sure every shot counted and there were always some good, and disappointing surprises with the returned prints.Then finally getting those beautifully imperfect prints into an album – not even into separate plastic dividers inside, just with actually photo mounts straight onto the page – feels like the most wonderful thing. For if photos aren’t meant to be gazed over (other than on a phone display or on you laptop), what are they for? There’s a major satisfaction of holding that imperfect surprise of a print in your hot little hands…and there you go, that is your art.

As photographers now, with all the new technology and post-processing available, you find yourself expecting nothing less than perfection. Perfect composition, lighting, exposure, posing, editing, all of it; some aspects of the medium have allowed us to get close to perfect, particularly with the new ability to take countless shots without worrying about wasting frames/money. But we may spend too much time trying to get that ‘perfect shot’ these days…

I think I will set myself a personal cat project with film because I think this would be a lot harder challenge against digital. I would expect most pet photographers to agree that they can take a lot of shots of cats and dogs at a session but most will be throw-aways, due to the activity and often non-compliance (or if you’d like to say, they had a different agenda that day). I don’t think I’d be able to do the same pet portraits on film, but I’d go in with hope that the less-than-perfect shots held their character as I imagined but still showed me some great surprises. I will have to research some pet photographers of the past who shot on film…

On to a week of organizing photos, possibly a cat session and a model session, as well as prepping for school portraits! It’s keeping me busy but it also keeps me sane; it all serves as therapy!

“A beautiful thing is never perfect.’ – Proverb

Bye for now. xo ~ K

Oh, England… | Reflections

February 27, 2012January 14, 20161 Comment

I’m ending the week with a lot on my mind, a lot of projects to finish, groups and fundraisers to sort out, and a major desire to get out of town. This time last year, me and my little family were planning and prepping for our trip back home to England, and it now seems like an eternity has gone by. I am very much needing what I think is a much-deserved break and that would be a wonderful one to have coming up again.

I moved to the States from the UK over 17 years ago but as much as I have assimilated and have my life invested here, naturally I miss much that lies across the ‘pond’ (also know as the Atlantic). All my family is there, my son is thousands upon thousands of miles from seeing his grandparents regularly (as well as being far from his other set of grandparents, who are in North Carolina), and I dearly miss having proper fish and chips. I even got desperately excited at the site of several shelves of British goods in the local supermarket the other day, and more than one person reading that on Facebook pointed out that I need to get out more. Umm, yesss.

I will save the gig photos I edited last week and all my reminiscing about ‘Old Blighty’ for another day and instead post some photos from our trip last year (please view the gallery). If it stands to motivate me to push for us to get out of town for even one night so that I can recharge and have a change in scenery, brilliant. I am feeling a need more than ever to feel revitalized in body and soul so I can continue to be the person I need to be for my son, and to preserve my sanity! At least I now know I can just hop down the street to buy a packet of English Hobnobs and Branston Pickle.

Here’s to a less stressful next week! And crossing fingers for rest and a reprieve in my near future. Cheerio then.

xo ~ K

*All photos taken using Hipstamatic iPhone app.

Where we love is home– home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sadness in the Seattle sun | Reflections

February 8, 2012January 14, 20164 Comments

Today was another glorious day in Seattle. For the last few days it has felt like spring has hit us early and everyone is enjoying the sunny weather; if you know Seattle, you know that we lap it up…suddenly you see people in sunglasses and shorts, yet it’s still technically winter. We tend to associate the sun with happiness and that feeling of warmth both inside and out, with vacations and summer, with family get-togethers and BBQs, with light and life. But sad and tragic things happen every single day, no matter the weather; life doesn’t stop because it hits a whopping 60 degrees Fahrenheit in February.

Today is…was, the birthday of someone I loved very much, and he would have been the same age today that I was the year he died, almost 7 years ago. The day he died was a sunny day too. Birthdays are when we celebrate a person’s life, yet when someone dies, birthdays, anniversaries and just about every holiday season, it is hard not to think of the person that is now gone. Now that I’m a parent, I can’t help imagining how a (his) mother feels on the birthday of a child you have lost. I do know the grief I have felt and feel at the loss of a partner… And that grief was unbearable, and I felt as though I went to hell and back after he died.

I felt the need to visit a cemetery today; there is no grave site for me to visit and I have always sat with my thoughts and feelings alone, but a place of rest and peace was where I wanted to be. We went to Lake View Cemetery, up by Volunteer Park; Roman and I wandered through the tombstones and grave sites of all these people we didn’t know but who other people have lost and loved. There I was telling my 4-year-old boy to not jump on the graves, to walk around them, to help me look for Bruce Lee’s grave (as if he knew where it was…), and I tried to explain in preschooler terms, what all those grave stones represent.

There’s a lot of sadness in my heart when I think of who I have lost, yet a lot happens in 7 years. Whole lifetimes happen and happiness can be rediscovered. I didn’t see just see just a cemetery today, I saw my little boy and his whole life ahead of him, one that shouldn’t end before mine. I never want to know that loss. And I no longer hold the belief that we ‘should live each day as if it were our last’ but that we should appreciate all we have now while we still have it. Life as we know it can change in an instant.