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Some time ago, when I was on a surfing safari between Coffs and Moffs, an elderly gent who was rock fishing on a headland in the middle of nowhere and I got chatting about photography and light and films. I had been seriously attempting some landscape shots with a $4000 digi-rig and a tripod. Despite my aRt school training, my pics were crap - the hard light, the wrong angle - numerous excuses. So we talked. He wasn't catching any fish but having a crack and enjoying being outside the house he lived in 20 minutes drive away.
We talked about light and the old masters like Dupain and Cotton, who were an item a long time ago, when monochrome was the only option. We talked about old films you can't get anymore like Kodak Infra-red and we talked about medium and large format - an easy, casual connection of like-minded souls.
He wasn't sure what his life would be like now that his wife had passed away and there was nobody to share his imagery with. Instagram hadn't been invented yet and he didn't sound like an online kind of guy.
Later that day, he ended up giving me a Nikon F80 film camera with a zoom lens.
He wasn't sure if it still worked but understood I was a fellow traveller on the backroads of creativity. I put a number of rolls of C41 colour film through it and here's some with the colour desaturated.
Otherwise, there's no manipulation. What's the point if you're shooting with film?
"there are heroes in the seaweed"
Leonard Cohen
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