Photography: My First Roll
First off, welcome back to the blog of the ever procrastinating Matthew Binamira Sanders. It’s been a pretty long while since the last time I actually went through and posted something here on my site. I feel like every day I spend about two hours of my day thinking about all of the things that I could be posting here but then I never end up actually doing it. I don’t know if that has to do with undiagnosed depression or if i’m just mad lazy. Probably a mixture of both.
Anyways, welcome back, and if you're new to my page and this is one of your first times reading something of mine online, then you’re definitely in for an interesting ride. Get ready to read something that almost sounds like a fever dream but also presented in a way that feels like you’re watching a youtube video at 2x speed. To be honest, I don’t even proof read any of the stuff on here, I literally just write from my mind and then post that. I feel like the raw thoughts that I have are much better than the super thought out stuff. It also keeps me from procrastinating as much.
Okay, but seriously lets get into what i’m actually trying to talk about here. So back in April I ended up impulse buying a Canon AE-1 film camera. I mean, i’ve always wanted one and have been looking to get one since last year, but like I never really thought that I would actually buy one. But yeah, I ended up doing that, got it right from amazon for about $200 with a nifty fifty lenses on it. I also bought a pack of five rolls of portra 160 color film for it, which was the most recommended film on amazon.
(As you can see, I didn’t really know to much about the film photography world back then, to be honest, I don’t even really know a lot about it now.) Also I needed to buy some random ass rectangular batteries for the camera, like they aren’t even rechargeable which is mad to me, but then again, I haven’t even gone through one yet.
Anyways, all of that came in like two weeks later from my ordering date. In that span I spent like almost ever day watching people use film cameras and shooting film. I’d say I watched more photography based videos during that two weeks than I normally do in a month. I guess I was just super excited about entire experience. I spent days watching Grainy Days and Willem Verbeeck learning from them and hyping myself up for this new part of my photography career. Then, after a long wait, my new camera and gear arrived.
Skipping all the random bits of opening and unboxing everything and learning how to use the camera and load film, fast forward to late April when I began and finished my first roll of film. In the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t really expecting a lot from my first roll of film. I kind of knew that my first roll of film would probably be the weakest out of all of the rolls that I would shoot in the future. But looking back at the scans of my first roll, there are a couple of nice shots in there. I was mainly focusing on learning how to read the light meter and how to compose everything in focus, which I feel like I did pretty well. There are some shots that aren’t super focused and some shots that are under and over exposed, but overall, not too bad for my first roll.
Looking back at them now is actually super interesting to me, I don’t know, there’s something about film that is super nostalgic and interesting to me. I found that I really focus on observing everything around me and really looking at compositions with my eyes rather than just shooting away like I would with a digital camera. You really have to take your time with film, especially since you only get like 35 shots before you have to switch out rolls, and them rolls are EXPENSIVE dawg. But honestly, starting to shoot film has really opened my eyes to appreciating photos and taking photos more. And I kinda made a vow to myself to not add any thing digitally to my film photos like objects or removing objects. Like I want to keep the shots as analog as possible just to keep the original feel of the film there (there’s like a specific word that i’m looking for that I can’t remember right now that means what I just said, leave a comment on what that word is please to ease my anxiety). The most i’ll do to my films scans would be minor color chances just to fit my style and thats about it.
But yeah, shout out to my first roll of film and shout out to film photography in general cause that ish takes patience. Shout out to actually getting back into shooting and writing in this blog. Maybe i’ll have another post coming soon, that would be unprecedented and would actually break the internet. Anyways, thank you for reading if you made it this far, shout out to you. Leave a comment if you wanna leave a comment, anyways, see you soon and stay lit <3
