2012年7月19日木曜日

Back to Analog






My web site: www.arito.com


When I moved into my current apartment, I didn't have enough space to set up a black and white darkroom. Plus, at the time, I was shooting a lot of color negatives which I would scan and print digitally with an inkjet printer.

Several years after that, I started shooting digitally and absolutely enjoyed the ease, convenience, and image quality of digital capture. But, I always had the itch to shoot with black and white film, with its rich tones, image rendition and grain.

Well, after all these years, I'm back to analog. Actually, it will be a hybrid work flow, since I can't set up a darkroom, I'm developing my negatives traditionally and scanning them afterwards.

I was so much fun getting back into all of it. The chemicals, the rolling the film onto the reels, the hour spent quietly, listening to music and not doing much, but the occasional agitation of the tank. It brought back so many memories, and especially that feeling of excitement when pulling the finished film off the reel in the water.

Anyway, I developed eight rolls of film that I had shot a long time ago, and never got around to developing. They had been sitting in my fridge all this time, and I had no idea what was on them. Turns out, most of them were from New Years 2007! But, surprisingly, the images hadn't degraded very much at all, and I was able to get some really nice tones out of them. It was fun to "discover" images from over 5 years ago, sort of a film time capsule, I guess.


やっとという感じで、5,6年ぶりに白黒フィルムの自宅現像を再開しました。これまでにずっとやりたいと思いつつ、なんか後回しにしてしまっていたのです。

久しぶりにやってみると本当に楽しくて、何もしないで音楽聞きながら容器を撹拌する時間、密閉された容器の中で画像が定着しているのを想像しながらドキドキします。そして、最後に全工程が終わって流水の中からネガを取り出して光にかざした時に、透けて浮かび上がる絵。この時の興奮はデジタルでは絶対に味わえないのです。

今回はテストという事で、覚えてないくらい前に撮影したままずっと冷蔵庫に眠っていたネガ8本を現像しました。その結果、その多くは2007年のお正月の時に撮ったものだったのです!その割には殆ど画像の劣化がなく、綺麗なトーンが出せました。ちょっとしたフィルムのタイムカプセルでした。

そして、粒子やトーンの感じなど、やっぱり白黒フィルムは良いですね~。

2012年7月10日火曜日

From the Archives 01



My web site: www.arito.com


Nothing special to write about... Just a small selection of shots taken around the city.


街中のスナップを集めてみました。