Color Film In The Summer Sun
I don’t work with color film nearly as often as I should. That’s a statement I’ve said at least seven hundred times over the years… heck, probably more. The simple fact is color film is incredibly expensive these days and not as easy to process at home as black and white film, so I tend to shy away from it out of pure convenience. However, making good art and interesting images is never about doing what it easiest, and every so often I need to remind myself of that.
Contrary to popular belief, the Pacific Northwest, and Oregon, actually have really beautiful summers. Sure, it rains here a lot in the winter, but that just means the region pops to life the moment the sun takes over. This makes a perfect opportunity to work with color film. Bright big blue beautiful skies and lots of warm earth tones can be found everywhere. Add a little bit of a cool breeze and a location without another soul in sight and quite frankly you have a recipe for photographic perfection.
When Eva and I got out to the location we were going to work in, the weather was so nice she asked if she could just dance around for a little bit. I didn’t mind of course and I blew threw a roll of sixteen frames with my Pentax 645n in less than five minutes. In the end, every frame from the roll was a keeper to the point where I almost feel like this whole photography practice is a bit too easy. Just get a little lucky with the perfect day, point the camera, and expose frame after frame.
For these images I used Kodak Ektar 100, which is one of my favorite color negative film stocks. The tones tend to run very warm, which aren’t exactly true to life, but I consider that a good thing. As of the publishing of this blog post there are several new color film stocks out there on the market I have yet to try including Ilford’s Phoenix line and all of a sudden Kodak has come out with Kodacolor in two ISO speeds. I guess I have to make good on my previous statement…. I need to work with color film more often!
Camera: Pentax 645n with 35mm f/3.5 lens.
Film: Kodak Ektar ISO 100 in medium format.
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