I've been attending RCC for a semester now and one of the great things I've learned about is film photography. I come from the age of digital. Until this program, I had never shot with a film camera other than the throw away kind. I have a canon rebel xsi and I've taken thousands of pictures with it, but there's just something about the magic of shooting with film. Kind of like a family that decides not to find out what the sex of their baby is until it's born. Everytime I processed my negatives and hung them up there was this a-ha! moment and then when I go to the darkroom to print I can see the beauty and detail in each image. I have to SLOW down...a lot to set up the shot I want and decide how I want it to look, meter, and hold my breath because I know that once I click that shutter release I can't just go look at an LCD screen to see if I got the shot or not. It's a done deal. But I love it! I've been checking out film cameras online because I think I may just revert back and appreciate photography as the art it is for a while. I'm looking at the Nikon f100 but I really want the MF of the Mamiya 6 rangefinder. They don't have this camera to check out at school but I have shot with the Mamiya 645, Bronica, and this weekend I had the Mamiya C220. I bought a roll of color film and took my kids out in a field to play with this airplane and just shot. Can't wait to see how those turn out. But I shot a roll of B&W at Charles B Aycock birthplace recently for my portfolio and I'm going to school to print today and finish up an assignment.
The sad part is that I will most likely have to part with this great program at RCC in favor of a closer school like Mount Olive College. The pros to this are that the school is closer which is more practical for my family sharing one vehicle and the program at MOC is visual comm so I will be learning just as much about graphic design, however, no film is used for the photography classes. I just love the look of traditional B&W film and it's so breathtaking and beautiful. I know ECU still has a darkroom but that's still 45 minutes I don't want to drive to go to school. The Nikon f100 is pretty darn cheap on ebay so if I have to I'll go with 35mm since the Mamiya 6 is still expensive, for me anyway. We'll see. I'll post some pics when I print my Aycock photos so you can see the difference. The picture above is one I shot for a "negative space" project. It was shot at Waynesboro Park in Goldsboro.
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