Analog days are here again

January 30, 2023 in Photography

Ever since the modern plague descended upon us in 2020 I’ve put one aspect of my photography on the back burner, namely analog photography. It wasn’t an intentional choice in any way, in fact it was something that dawned on me several months into it. “Tomas, you’re not shooting your old film cameras…is that something we want to change?” It turned out that, nope I was fine with letting them and my rolls of film in the fridge be for the time being. Of course I didn’t think we’d still be in pandemic mode (sort of) at the start of 2023, I figured we’d be back to normal long ago!

*Day 232 - August 20: Flag upon flag upon flag*

The 365 Project Mark VI - Month Eight

September 07, 2021 in Project, Photography

The year is two thirds done and the air has a certain crispness to it at night. No doubt that fall is approaching, but we’ll get to enjoy warm days for a little while longer (hopefully anyway!). The eighth month of the year brought some previous types of photography and locations back to me, topics and places I’ve not had much contact with for the duration of the pandemic, so that was a lot of fun!

Car Nerdery

January 06, 2019 in Events, Photography

Unlike many middle-aged men I am not a very car-obsessed person. To me a car is more a means to an end - a way to get from point A to point B, preferably in one piece - than an interest or a hobby. However, I do appreciate cool designs and people who are into a particular interest, because in a way they're the same kind of nerds/geeks that us photographers are...only aimed at another specialty field.

Lights of the Night

November 28, 2017 in Photography

One of the trickier things to do in photography and getting right (at least it's been that way for me) is night photography. The hit to miss ratio is so much lower than in daytime photography, because you're dealing with such long exposures that things can go wrong in mid-process in countless number of ways. Yet, it's fun to do...partly because you get such unexpected results sometimes.

Photowalk in Monochrome

October 25, 2017 in Photography

At long last I've gotten around to processing my negatives from the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk in Copenhagen, Denmark on October 7th. As I wrote in my previous blog post from the day after the event it was a VERY wet affair, so I decided very soon after we arrived at the starting point to only shoot analog photos (and a few cell phone snaps here and there) since my DSLR isn't particularly weather sealed and I didn't want to risk losing it or have to send it in for repairs. So analog it was from there on!

I'm on the way down the analog rabbit hole...

September 21, 2017 in Photography

During 2017 I have shot more and more film, all on Tri-X 35 mm film and I have enjoyed getting better and better at it. I am still not at the level where I am confident that I won't accidentally get an entirely black frame on the roll here and there, but I am getting there...slowly.

I've been asked why I shoot film when there's digital available and my answer to that has several parts. I do it because it forces me to slow down and think before I shoot. It's VERY easy to snap away like a lunatic with your DSLR and ending up with 700 pictures to go through (done it many times!).

First image of my 365 project this year. "Night Cycle"

New Year, New Start!

January 01, 2016 in Photography

After quite an hiatus again from this blog it is now the first day of 2016. I type these words after a 2015 that had a few ups and quite a lot of downs and it feels nice to say that it is a new, "clean" slate as far as photography goes. Sure, I can tell myself that I'll improve all the things I'm not good at as far as photography goes this year - I'll master this or that, but I am not going to do that. That smells too much of New Year resolutions. Instead I'm going to try to keep things much, much more realistic.

There are two things I want to get better at/try this year as far as photography and that is analog photography/darkroom work and my restarted Instagram 365 project. That may seem like very weak goals, but these are thing I hope to stick with throughout the upcoming year.

Shooting film/developing

The analog/darkroom stuff will be an interesting experience, but one that I've been wanting to learn more about for many years, ever since learning about it via Ted Forbes' The Art of Photography podcast. I've been telling myself that I "should get into that" but without doing anything about it. Now though, with my photo club getting a brand new darkroom with lots of space, it should be much easier to learn and get into. We'll see how that ends up functioning in the end, but at least I will try it! The fun stuff will be picking what camera to have a go with. I do have an old 35 mm Chinon camera that my dad bought in 1979, but I also want to have a go at using a Holga and 120 film, because of the size of the negative. So many choices! :-)

The Instagram 365 Project

The 365 project is one that is "easier", since it's something I've tried before. My plan is simple: to shoot, edit and post one photo a day for the whole year via my LG G4. The camera in that thing is so good that I think it'll do justice to such a project in a way that my previous phone (an HTC One M7) didn't. I had a go at this two years ago, but ran out of steam after 7 months. This year I hope to go the distance, since in hindsight it was pretty foolish to stop after reaching well beyond the halfway point! I won't be doing a blog post for every day's post, but rather summaries, either every week or every month. If you want to follow along on a daily basis, go to my Instagram account at https://www.instagram.com/tomasnilssonfoto/ or the Flickr album where they will be displayed as well (https://flic.kr/s/aHskrRACGm).