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Editor’s Note: This post is part of our guest post series on photography. To browse the largest collection of film camera rentals in Hong Kong, go to web.gaifongapp.com.
Author: Digital Darkroom | Ian Wong
“Why are you shooting film when you can use digital?”
Some time ago I was at the Mandarake complex in Tokyo, where it’s seven floors of just pure craziness—ranging from innocent manga to some more hardcore stuff. I had two rolls of black and white film with me.
First, the control variable: the Tri-X 400. It had appeared in pretty much every single video I’ve done since Digital Rev and it’s pretty much the black-and-white film I’ve using it since I was 10 years old. The first roll and it will probably be the last roll ever use.
Then, the newcomer. Since I was in Japan, and I was going to be in the streets, I chose the JCH Street Pan 400.
So inevitably, for everyone who has a passion for analogue things, such as toys, books, and of course film photography, they would come across lots of naysayers. There would be people who say, why are using such an obsolete technology?
Why are you playing with toys, when there are computer games? Why are you shooting film when you can use digital? Why are you reading books, when you can read Kindle? Or why listen to vinyl when there’s FLAC?
But of course, what they’re missing is the passion that goes behind all these things.
When we talk about why we shoot film and not digital, there’s a feeling behind. And no matter how strange some of the things are, like the libraries of toys from the 80s in the Mandarake Complex, there’s feeling behind those as well.
We argue that a certain magic to the old and of course from a photographer’s perspective that’s true. What’s more wonderful than watching Dunkirk, which was shot on film, in a movie cinema in 2017, or if you go on holiday with your old crumpled up paperback?
What’s more transformative than rereading the same book, again and again, in the same paperback? In terms of film, if you’re in a darkroom or in the digital darkroom, and you’re watching a print develop in the developer solution. That’s beautiful. Irreplaceable. Nothing comes close to that.
After Akihabara, we found ourselves in Ginza, and we’re going to look for a coffee master at Cafe de l’Ambre.
It was a public holiday and it was awesome because they blocked off all the roads and no cars were there. There were old people in kimonos walking around.
Watching a print develop in the developer solution… Nothing comes close to that.
This guy we were were visiting had been making coffee for decades— easily. Probably at 60, 70 years. He’s done things the same way that has always been done. Just like there are film masters who’ve been doing things the same way they’ve always been done.
Are there better ways to make coffee? Sure, I guess. But there was something quite unique and distinct about what we tried that day.
Are there better ways to make coffee? Sure… I guess.
Why JCH is a roll that interests me is because it’s so specifically set for a certain kind of light and a certain kind of mood. When we’re talking black-and-white film and film in general, we’re talking about how it manufactures a mood. When I want to use something neutral, something photojournalist, then I have Tri-X. If I want something pretty something kind of really raw and vivid I can try something else like JCH Street Pan.
This, was a moment made for monochrome.
Back in the day—maybe ten years ago—there were probably 30 types of black-and-white films. There were slides from Agfa, there was the Ilford bunch, the Fuji bunch, the Kodax bunch, and now, sadly, a lot of that has dwindled away.
Contax T3 JCH Street Pan
I think part of that is that, by going digital, we’ve removed a large part of the photographer’s own input into the black-and-white emotions and tonality. Before, when I was learning how to use darkroom as a kid, you can experiment with different kinds of chemicals you can use, and darkroom enthusiasts would tell you hundreds of their own favourite recipes and mixes. Right now, when we give it to a lab, they have their own recipe. Ten different types of black-and-white films will use the same kind developer, or the same kind of chemicals, for the sake of consistency.
. I will always love the feeling I get when I open up my contact sheet
Emotion, if we boil it down, is basically the influence of colour and tonality.Film has character because it ages—like wine—and different producers have always made different tones and colours that inspire different feelings. Colour photography has grown in leaps and bounds in digital. Many talented colourists and professional graders are masters in crafting the right tones to match the right footage.
So I feel like currently film still matters because black-and-white still matters. I will always love the feeling I get when I open up my contact sheet and see a photo that was simply meant to be captured in black and white. Something that simply couldn’t exist in colour. It’s the finality of it. A choice that’s irreversible.
About Digital Darkroom Digital Darkroom is an ode to film photography. With this project, Anne and I are seeking to go back to the roots of why we were drawn towards this craft in the first place, and what compels us to keep coming back.
About Gaifong Gaifong is an online platform where you can rent photography gear, drones, and other equipment to and from fellow creatives. Available in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and selected markets. www.gaifongapp.com
Editor’s Note: This post is part of our guest post series on photography. Learn more here.
By Ian Wong | Digital Darkroom
Photography helps us remember. It’s a selective form of reminiscing.
Someone once told me that the most boring thing in the world is looking at someone else’s travel photos. Everyone has memories of being trapped at a dinner table with your least favourite aunt, being forced to scroll through their photo albums or iPhone, seeing the most poorly composed holiday photos imaginable.
So why is that that images which might mean so much to your aunt mean so little to you? And in this age of social media when you take photographs and put them online—who are you shooting for?
Over the past three weeks, we went to a Russian wedding, to France to try some wine, and to Switzerland for just a travel. We didn’t shoot much—Anne shot some stuff for our wine company, I was driving around, posted a few pictures on Instagram, shot a few rolls of film, but I didn’t get that many fantastic shots I was very happy with. At the end of our trip, I look back and, you know what, I kind of think that’s all right.
Sometimes in an image, everything is perfect—the composition is right, the lighting is good. But there’s no spark.
Sometimes in an image, everything is perfect—the composition is right, the lighting is good. But there’s no spark. There’s no love. So how do you fix that? Especially in this age of social media. We think about the audience. Right now when I shoot, I shoot some photos for Facebook, for friends. I used to shoot more serious photos for Flickr (but that’s long been neglected) and then ever since working at Digital Rev, I started posting more on Instagram.
Having an audience on Instagram can be pretty awesome because, as a creative person, half of you wants to keep your work personally to yourself so no one ever criticizes it; but you also want to share it. Art is never developed in isolation, so it’s great when you can post it. You can get feedback. You can learn from others and that’s the great thing about posting and having an audience that is public.
Before we shared everything to the public—like, back in like early 2000s—we used to use MySpace or Xanga. We’d post like tons of pictures in blog form on Tumblr, just for friends. And I kept that all throughout like these last ten years. I really actually loved taking pictures of funny moments just for the small audience. When my friends look at my Instagram, it’s usually more boring but then, that kind of satisfies one outlet for me. The private stuff, the weird stuff, that’s for another audience. So when you separate those shots into different categories, you can go, oh I didn’t get the perfect, beautiful landscape, but hey, I found a funny moment with friends, so I’ll just chuck it “over here”.
Being happy with yourself does help with being happy with your photography because if you’re always stressing yourself out—of course, we still need to improve—you will end up being nowhere. Knowing your audience, separating those two, really helps with that.
For each of these different audiences, you can have your own projects and when you’re traveling, it’s great to define and divide your time into these different projects. It allows you to keep experimenting. Everyone has their own style, which is great—you should always develop some things that you like seeing and something you like shooting. And when experimenting, you can use these different audiences to explore different sides of things. So for example, street photography, or candid photography and funny moments, those can be for friends. And then you have landscapes and the serious stuff—that’s for the public, for Instagram.
When we were traveling this time, we had some stuff which was just work video, but we always squeezed in time for own personal photography. Anne’s always shooting. I’m always shooting. I’ve also been exploring a lot of drone photography, which is super fun for me—it’s completely new most the time. I sometimes forget to even take photos. Just flying around, exploring these amazing places with a completely different point of view, it’s just really good fun. It helps you get stay creative.
Something that keeps coming up over and over again nowadays is the issue of authenticity. What images are real? Which ones are fake? What emotions are being manufactured, and what idea of ourselves do we want to show to the public?
This is always relevant for travel photos where everyone wants to look like they’re having a great time. But it doesn’t make any sense to pretend to yourself that your life or a moment in your life was better than it actually was. There’s no need to put a filter to salvage sunset when it’s actually cloudy. There’s no need to look like you’re having fun, when you actually bored out of your mind.
Photography helps us remember. It’s a selective form of reminiscing. Sometimes the holiday can be so bad or are so good but in five years—which passes by faster you can think—often all those negative memories fade away because they weren’t captured on film.
At the end, all you’re left with are just pictures of you and your best friends.
About Digital Darkroom Digital Darkroom is an ode to film photography. With this project, Anne and I are seeking to go back to the roots of why we were drawn towards this craft in the first place, and what compels us to keep coming back.
About Gaifong Gaifong is an online platform where you can rent photography gear, drones, and other equipment to and from fellow creatives. Available in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and selected markets. www.gaifongapp.com
