I Shoot Film

I shot this on the shore of Chautauqua Lake while waiting for the sun to set. I love how the trees diffuse the light and the park by the lake was beautiful. I was in NY for the UPAA symposium and we spent a beautiful afternoon at the Chautauqua Institute.
The bell tower at Lake Chautauqua after the sunset.
Three ladies in the airport in Detroit waiting on a plane to Memphis and talking about eating barbecue. I used zone focusing and depth of field to get this photo. I love how old cameras have depth of field scales on the lens. I also really love the tactile feeling of winding film. I am not so crazy about having to cock the shutter for each shot.
Birdhouse behind the Reynolds Building on the Harding campus.
Same tree looking up. I am really loving the 44mm lens perspective of this lens. Yesterday I drove to Wynne to meet Julie's parents and to pick up the kids and bring them home. While driving I was listening to Brooks Jensen, editor of LensWork Magazine, podcasts and he was talking photography being a form of memory and about cameras being our memory machines. Interesting ideas about memory, but the idea of the memory machine kept bringing me to this camera. I really like how this camera captures memories.
This is a memory to keep. Jackson and I on our first bike ride with his new bike. We rode all over the HU campus just the two of us. We stopped under this tree with the bird house to take a break and get a drink because it was really hot outside that day.
Me and Kodak Signet 35 camera.
Ribs on July the 3rd. Those rib racks were part of my Fathers Day present. We started cooking the ribs at 10 in the morning using one burner and hickory wood in the smoker box. At 3:00 we basted with Apple Juice and wrapped them up in foil to continue to cook up to the magical 165 degree safe point for pork. I have to give thanks to my brother Kelly for the BBQ cooking tips. If you are wondering they were great. Two racks were rubbed with Rainforest Cafe Mojo Rib Rub, two racks were Corky's Rib Rub, and the final rack had a very spicey Brazilian Beef Rub that I found at Sam's Club.
Being home all day on Friday and keeping an eye on ribs is relaxing. Jalen spent some quality heat of the afternoon time on the couch with his DS. I like how the backlight carves out the details of his profile.
Slipping ahead to July 5th when we celebrated the 4th with Julie's family. This is Uncle Charlie and Chris sitting out on the patio waiting for the annual parade to start.
There is always time for bb guns on the family 4th celebration. Jackson is putting the hurt on a coke can with his Daisy Buck bb gun.
Jalen taking a break from bike riding to do a few pull-ups as he waits for his turn at the empty coke can.

Josie and cousin Olivia are moving this big rock in the search for Rollie Pollies. As you can see below they found this giant black caterpillar.

Jamie reloading the music on her Disney Mix Stick. I found out later from Jenna that Jamie loaded up on Christmas music. You never know what Jamie is up to.

Finally Josie and one of her softball teammates.

Sweet Dream Gloves

Josie knows the secret to having Sweet Dreams.......sleep in your Minnie Mouse gloves.

Summer Film Project

I started using Shutterfly this spring to sell images online. One of the cool features is the ability to set up share sites to share photos with people. I used this feature to share photos from this years baseball/softball season with the other families on our teams. Tonight, I set up a share site for my summer film shooting project. I hope you might click on the title line of this post and visit that share sight. You can see all the photos and I am writing journal entries about the things I am learning. I only throw away bad exposures and the completely unusable shots. I am not leaving this site for that one but I am not going to post every photo on this blog. I do find myself seeing light and using film makes me think about each frame since I am paying for each frames development. I have posted the links to the online photographer site that inspired me to do this project. I have blogged about those here but if you haven't read them I hope you will read them. I left a guest book on the share site and i would really love to hear your thoughts about my photos. I would also love to hear about things you do to increase creativity.

I got more film in the bag and this weekend I am shooting a 50th anniversary party for my in-laws church and of course the annual Ainsworth 4th of July family reunion.

More Film

This past Saturday I went up to Camp Tahkodah for a dedication ceremony. I took my RF camera with me so I could keep up my summer resolution to shoot film. This is Denis Rine talking to the campers about what is important in life. Dennis has a different perspective on this as he has buried his daughter,Micah, this spring. Micah grew up at Camp Tahkodah in the summers. Her Grandparents worked there for years and Micah and her family would spend time there every summer. Dennis was telling the campers that even as her cousins fondly remember summers at Camp,ski trips and vacations at the lake and Micah being home for the holidays Micah had something that is more precious than that now. Micah had a relationship with God. Nothing is more important to Micah now than that one relationship. I wish we could all have that mentality. This life is brief for our bodies but our spirits will live eternally. We can control where we spend eternity only by how we live our life on earth. Micah was focused on her spiritual relationship with God and even though her death was untimely, we know she is now resting with her heavenly father.

On to lighter things now.


You can't leave camp in late afternoon light without taking a few photos.


I stopped a couple of times on the way home to shoot things that caught my eye on the side of the road. I always find it hard to pass up Black Eyed Susans but I must admit that it is just not the same to shoot them in B&W. I really loved this fence post as well.
This week I have been at the UPAA Symposium at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown , NY. We shot a baseball game Monday night and I got a couple of photos that I liked. I really loved this old guy keeping his book as the game progressed. I took his photo and I don't think he even knew I was there.

I hope you enjoy the photos. I am having fun with my summer film project and I am having a great time with my UPAA buddies. But I hope more than anything that we keep the memory of Micah alive through that Gazebo and Bell that were dedicated at Camp and that we can learn from her the value of being a child of God.

B&W Film

Well I really am taking photos on film with my 35mm RF camera and so far I have two rolls back and a few photos to share. This photo is of the Black House in Searcy. I was there to see the photo exhibit that had photos from my friends Wally Jarrett, Craig Rainbolt and John Keller. I got there about 1:30 on Friday and they didn't open until 2p.m. so I luckily had my camera and I got this photo. Stupid me would have more photos of the Black House if I had completely rewound the film before opening the camera back. Just a little out of practice with winding and unwinding film.

These photos are from the local Catfish house. The kids love to feed the fish in the little pond at Huckleberries.Josie enjoys Cotton Candy at the VBS Carnival. Of course if you are Josie and you try to say VBS too fast it comes out BBS.
Jalen getting a Black Widow spider painted on his face.
Josie getting a spider as well from our friend Julie Turner.
The dunking booth is a big hit. This is our great Sheriff Ricky Shourd being a good sport and taking his turn in the booth.

I am in Jamestown, NY this week at the UPAA Symposium. We had a great day of lectures today and later this week we will see Joe McNally. I am very excited about seeing him as I have read The Moment it Clicks and I was reading The Hot Shoe Diaries before I left it on my plane in Detroit on the way to NY.

Gotta get in bed we have a shoot at 5:45 this morning.

Sunsets and Baseball

Last night Jackson's baseball team was playing in the tournament championship game. They lost a close game to a tough Zaxby's team that they had beaten before. As we were leaving the sunset was beautiful. FYI- this photo just became the new wallpaper on the iPhone.

Jackson Testing

GeoTagged, [N35.23744, E91.72722]

Jackson is helping with a summer research project studying caffine effects.

David Burnett

I keep reading about people missing film and it comforts me to not be alone in that boat. I miss shooting film. I miss using those old film cameras. i loved my Nikon F5 and I still use my F100, Hasselblad X-Pan, Yashica 124G, Canon T-90 and T-70 and my ever trusty Olympus Stylus Epic.

I fondly remember in the old days when we used film in the PR office at HU and we had our own darkroom. I shot mainly with 35mm Nikons. I started with a 8008 and soon moved up to the 8008s. The s was for spot metering. I bet I took a million photos with that body and as I remember I don't think I ever had to send it in to be repaired. I had a Nikon FE-2 as a backup. Thinking about that old FE-2, I had the motor drive attachment for that camera and one day Gary Elliott mentioned that he had that camera and always wanted the motor drive. Well he had a 55 F3.5 Macro lens and we traded. I so got the sweet end of that deal. I still use that lens today even though it is manual focus. In the old days when I wasn't feeling creative I would switch to a different camera. I would usually shoot with the office medium format camera, a Bronica 645 with a 40mm, 75mm, and a 150mm lens and 2-120 film backs. On occasion when I didn't want to change cameras I would go to the bookstore and buy some Tri-X and Plus-X film. That changed things up in the darkroom as we normally used TMAX 400. Sadly I never new how great TrI-X was, I used T-Max because it had much better grain. I didn't appreciate the latitude of the old grainy film. I was reading the current magazines of the day and they were about the new better films. I didn't spend time learning the old great photographers until much later and we were already changing to digital.

David Burnett is an interesting journalist because he has used film all throughout his career. He shot the 2000 Presidential campaign with a Rollieflex and today he shoots a good deal with a Speed Graphics. Here and here and here are links describing his 4x5 work.
Here is a link to David Burnett's website. Here is a link to his article in this months Digital Journalist web page that got this post started. Don't for get to read Bill Pierce and Dick Kraus while you are over at the Digital Journalist.

Photos from Today

After my previous post, about high minded use of RF film cameras to brush up on my photography skills, I left the camera at my office yesterday.  So today I pulled out my original digital slr the Nikon D1X and  turned it to b&w and mounted my 35 F2 lens and got busy taking photos.

The card game of the weekend has been UNO.
We had friends over this afternoon and they got in on the action as well.
Jenna and Facebook on the phone.
Jenna also in the card game action.

Tonight we went to Jackson's baseball game.  This is Cade the catcher who by the way has a brother named Catcher.
Jalen is our kid with the most nicknames.  We call him Boo, Boo Dog, and many other things but when we are at Jackson ball game Jalen becomes Batman because be he is the batboy.
Coach Craig gets animated between innings.

The last at bat pep talk.

Photo Quote

"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson

I found this quote as a Tweet from magnumphotos.

Brings me to a couple of quick article links from my favorite online photo magazine, The Online Photographer.

If you notice Henri Cartier-Bresson is shooting with a Leica.
Here, here and here are the articles about how to learn photography.
I am doing the "Variations on a Theme" portion myself as I don't have a Leica. I do have a Kodak Signet 35 RF that my Mother-in-Law bought for me several years ago at an auction. It is a rangefinder and it has no meter so I am guessing exposure and I am using C-41 B&W and not using Tri-X as I don't have ready access to a darkroom anymore. I am only planning on doing it for the summer and not a year because as Henri pointed out I am past my worst photos. I am looking at this as a fun summer brush-up course in photography that will possibly yield a few memorable photos.