I step onto the threshold of the sliding glass door and look out into a still frame of a movie. Nothing is moving. Every single leaf on the massive tangle of grape vines and on every other plant in the garden is frozen in place. The neighbor's trees, the sky above, everything is locked in place. There is no sound. No movement. No cars, no dogs barking, no sirens or kids playing in the alley. An eerie feeling of wrongness prickles the skin of my forearms and neck. This isn't right. A small house swallow tears across the sky in complete silence, followed by another and another, each bird pumping their winds furiously, quietly. The orange-tinted light, filtered through a light haze of forest fire smoke softens all edges, bringing shadows up from crisp black to something entirely less clear.
I step down onto the aggregate concrete patio in hopes of shattering the flat two dimensional illusion brought on by the complete stillness of my yard.
First day of school. Forest fires and excessive heat warnings. Suburbia. Dinner time.
Life in Oregon in 2024 is not what it was like when I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s.
I don't often think about the aesthetic reasons for using film. For me it's usually enough that I love the process and materials, but it's getting harder and harder to be neutral. It's getting harder and harder to look across the valley of time and pretend like things are headed in the right direction.
And that's one reason to use film-to bring the past to life, to examine it, to contextualize it, to make it relevant. You can shoot old things with this old technology and ride a wave of cultural creative harmony, a synergy of subject and media. Nostalgia. Warm and fuzzy. You can use film to shoot new things, bringing the vibe of some other time to life and applying it to the present. I've heard this described as photographic cosplay and I feel like it's an apt insight because it encourages the viewer to reconcile the dissonance between medium and subject, between past and present.
As an artist, every choice we make has meaning. Everything matters.
As Marshal McLuhan said "The medium is the message".
Even if I don't often take the time to wrap my brain around the bigger picture most of the time and generally only find meaning in my work long after the shutter has been tripped, my choice of media, subject and composition matter. Not just in terms of technical, visual results, but in terms of the message of the work itself. What I make with the tools and subjects I choose creates something new, and that new thing should be clear.
My current exploration in film photography is an attempt to take the reigns of meaning a little earlier in my creative process, to be more intentional from the start. Obserational and intuitive as always, but intentional.
This brings me to the title of this post, and the most buried lede I may every write. I am falling for Kentmere 400 film in the 120 size. Depending on the exact negative size (645, 6x7, 6x9), in which zone I place the shadows, and the developer used, I find it to be one of the most versatile and scannable emulsions I have every used. In 6x9 with XTOL developer and normal shadow exposure it can present incredibly fine and nuanced tonal scale. In 645 size, with heightened shadow exposure, and either normal or contracted development it can be one of the most wonderfully contrasty films with impressively consistent/predictable grain structure. It's one hell of a film and, for me, one hell of a lot easier to scan than HP5+, especially when using the low-toxicity developer, XTOL.
Kentmere 400 in 120 can suffer from a bit of halation. It shows up only in strongly backlit situations on my experience. It also probably doesn't have as large of a dynamic range as HP5+. I have yet to find either of these to be an issue in any environment. In fact, the performance is so consistent and predictable that I consider these "downsides" as tools more than detrimental.
If there is any film I want to carry with me as I continue my journey in analog photography it is Kentmere 400. I just wish they made it in 4x5 size.
Prints of these images are available and they are gorgeous.
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