Hannah Blake

On my last post with Ellen, I mentioned I sold my Yashica Mat 124G because I had been given a gift. That gift was a 1950's era Rolleiflex TLR, I could not wait to use. So I kicked off the new year right by shooting with Hannah. I shot both digital and one roll of Kodak black and white film. All the square (6x6) photographs you see are from the Rollei. I took a break from shooting inside and we walked downtown Boise. I found this spot at the JUMP building that has interesting light during the day and I was hoping to practice a bit with more high key lighting. Success! We continued walking the bitter cold streets and found this gorgeous light bouncing from a window down to the sidewalk. I could've shot here all day long with Hannah in this pocket of light.  

I was stoked to see the negatives from the Rolleiflex were perfect and the camera had NO issues,Woo hoo! With that being said, I feel I need to start shooting more rolls of film on shoots instead of being so conservative and shooting one. I always regret when I see a whole roll come out great and wonder "what if." 

I have been developing my own black and white for a few months now. I have a C-41 kit for color film that I have yet to put together for developing. Soon I will, there is just a little fear of the unknown and have only doing it once. When I get comfortable I think I will begin a film blog and separate the digital shoots from the film ones!

Ellen On Film

A few months ago I purchased a 1970's era Yashica Mat-124G. I had been really, really wanting a square format (6x6) so the right deal came up and I picked one up. Now this camera was a TLR (twin lens reflex), the same sort of camera that Vivan Maier used to create her street photography, portraits, self portraits etc. 

Now usually when I get a new camera, lens or whatever I have a few people I will ask to create some work with the new equipment. And in this gear test, it was my red headed friend Ellen. Now it was early December so it was freezing cold and Ellen told me she had this amazing window light in her living room. The rest was history. Now I did shoot some digital but I'm more interested in shooting more film this year, especially since I obtained my own chemistry to develop at home. (Real quick I'll tell those photo nerds who are curious. I shot with TriX 400, metered at 1600. Developed with Kodak HC-110)

As excited as I was to use this camera. I SOLD IT. 

Why? You'll see on my next blog post when I develop, scan the next roll of film!