Photofeature #2

Chocked full of photo goodness, as well as a rant from Adam.

Unsatisfied - A meaningless rant by Adam.

(scroll down more if you just want pictures)

I’m an amateur.

I just have a bit of a love/hate thing going on right now. On one hand I like the low-contrast, cross processed, slightly blurry pseudo-vintage shots that EVERYONE seems to be doing right now..and on the other, I’m really starting to get sick of it.

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If people are doing it to get out of the mainstream, they have failed…It seems like everyone has got their hands on a discontinued camera and some expired film..

Speaking of which:

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I recently bought a Minolta SRT102 [example above] and I look forward to using it, I also have a Praktica IVF with a sticky shutter, and a Canon Rebel. My “main” (W.O.W nerd reference..) is a Canon 50D. At the same time that I am in my love/hate relationship with the “vintage” looking photography - I am not completely satisfied with the clean, crisp imagery either.. The problem is that I really don’t know what I want.

I feel unimpressed and unsatisfied, with my own work and a lot of the stuff I see on the interwebs. I also feel that the nice, crisp black and white work is oftentimes very contrived and posed. I really appreciate the spontaneity of the ‘vintage’ styles. Obviously, you find the same thing in both - very posed and contrived ‘vintage’ styled shots, and spontaneous black and white shots.

Maybe it’s because when you go ‘backward’ to a more simple camera, it allows you to be more creative and ‘free’ without all the knobbies and buttons to worry about.

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I’m sure that everyone has started to get bored with the ‘real to life’ way that photography has/had been going in general - and have gotten more interested in either creating more surreal looking photos or just getting back to the basics, and/or back to the darkroom.

My 50D has loads of knobbies and buttons and sometimes it takes away from the creative process. The Praktica however is very basic and allows you to focus more on composition, and since it’s film - you should think about how you’re going to expose it to get the effect you want.

I’m starting to get tired of slightly blurry photos of people’s Converse shoes, or heavily tattoo’d people with raybans..(this is a generalization of course!)

Hey - you do your thing! I’m just looking forward to something more.

The vintage thing is gorgeous, but what’s next? Haven’t we just moved backwards a little? The unfortunate things that would happen to film ‘back in the day’ are now considered to be an added bonus, making the image more artistic. Light seeping in, expired films etcetera..I know I like that sort of thing too. But what’s the next step.

So in closing: I love the vintage looking photography, I love the crisp, clean photography, I love the dirty, grimy overexposed cross-processed photography.