^^ View from our cabin at Shrine of St. Therese ^^
^^ circa 1985^^
^^ This was our view of Mendenahll Glacier from campsite 12. Not bad for $10/night ^^
^^ One of my most favorite photos of Sly to date. He looks so happy and relaxed. ^^
^ A bit weird and overexposed but I like how the landscape in Denali looks like a painted backdrop ^
^^ I didn’t even realize there was a little bug on the top of this plant ^^
I own quite a few film cameras — some I still have when I learned photography at school, some I inherited from my dad, and others were gifts from friends and Sly over the years. It’s been ages since I shot regularly on film and I have been hoping to get back into it since, for me, the quality cannot be mimicked by any program or filter found today. At least I don’t think so — I’ve always felt there to be something so tactile about film and something so simple and comforting about taking pictures with a “low tech” camera. These days I must shoot thousands of photos per trip so I am always interested to see what I selected to photograph knowing that I only have 24-36 exposures. I’m not saying I’ll ever get rid of my digital cameras, but in some ways I think that is probably the better approach to photography.
All of these photos were taken with my dad’s old fully manual Pentax K-1000 with a 50mm lens on Fuji Superia X-tra 400 ISO film. My dad is no longer around but whenever I take pictures with my dad’s camera, I feel like I’m sharing the moment with him,
In total I think I shot about 4 rolls of film — one of which I accidentally exposed and broke when manually rewinding the film. I scanned these images from negatives and only edited them to crop out visible frame edges, remove scanning dust and resize for web. These were developed at one of the few places I found nearby that still developed film, and probably had not done so for ages. As such, I sort of question the freshness of the chemicals used to develop the film, as there is quite a bit of discoloration even when the lighting conditions were completely the same. Other than that, everything else remains original to the photograph — no additional filters or adjustments have been added.
For more on our Alaska trip, click here.
