When folks know you take pictures, they give you things.

 

Cameras. Weird lenses you can't use. Film.

 

FILM.

 

People have given me BAGS of film, crates of film, just thrown film at me. One guy at work, remembered me from a show years ago, handed me some old film just last week.

 

This shoot, had some old Kodak film another photographer gave me, he wasn't shooting medium format anymore, thought I could put it to good use.

 

And boy did I!

 

This stuff was wild, marine blue sky, super-crisp whites indoors, film where you never know exactly what you're gonna get, each shot back from the lab a surprise.

 

I'm not always a fan of surprises, mind you. Often, I want to see exactly what I saw in my head end up in the shot. But knowing, ahead of time, that what I see may not be what I get, I can put myself in the right frame of mind.

 

And that day, we were all up on Laura's roof, in the right frame of mind. We shot digital, we shot medium format, we shot 35mm, we shot polaroid, we used all the tricks in our book, one of (if not The) last time the original O' Bedlam crew got together, though of course we didn't know it at at the time.

 

Emily (who's holding the diffuser made this shot so even), she's off in Portland now, moved a few months ago for cooler weather, better hiking trails.

 

Laura's off in the south, easier cost of living, slower pace for raising a kid.

 

And me? I'm still here in the big city, doing my thing (though not as frequently as back then, that there pandemic gumming up the works), still living the good life, still getting handed weird film with which to work my magic.