Archive: Camping & Lomo ‘92
Little River State Park, VT. Nikon FE. 50mm f1.4. Lomography ’92 @ 400 ISO. August, 2023.
Originally, this was supposed to be the first blog post on the subtangent website. After some debate, I think it will still be the first blog post on the sub_tangent website. Some of the following was written in September 2023, and I started fiddling with this website probably 9-10 months before that. Maybe more? I’m now revisiting this post, two years later, and attempting to make it some sort of cohesive string of thoughts and connect it to where I am now in the timeline. I’ll let 2023 me (italics) take it from here.
A lot of photographers focus on laying out their work in a minimalistic way on their website. They won’t elaborate on much on one particular image - where it’s from, what they are trying to say, what mood they’re looking to create. I suppose I’m mirroring some of that here, but not entirely. I think for my images, I plan to share some details that explain the thought process or investigate the results of the shot. They may or may not appear in the “portfolio” area. They might just live here as headers for these posts, which I think could create an interesting subset of “second tier but still pretty good” images that are displayed in a different way.
Curiosity is an element of photography, as far as I can tell. “How’d they get that shot?” wonderings drive an interest in some folks’ work. Perhaps an on-the-nose sort of comment, but one I think about sometimes as a personal reminder. Am I trying to create a question in the viewer’s mind? Or, rather, a statement? I think it also maybe doesn’t matter.
I’ve struggled with what it is I should (dangerous word) or want to do with my photography. With music, it’s seemed straightforward. Write a song or melody, build it’s complimentary parts alone or with help, incorporate it into a live set, and one day record it. Play it again, here and there, in perpetuity or until I get tired of it. Photography feels less…linear? I am hoping that this blog / portfolio format might help me wrap my head around this idea, although I also tend to resist the idea that everything must have a “goal” or “output.” It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance that I think I’ll have to keep sorting through.
The shot above, which I quite like, is on Lomography’s new (at the time) Color ‘92 film stock. Honestly, this is one of the two or three from the entire roll that I actually enjoyed. Me missing focus / creating iffy compositions aside, this film emulsion is quite grainy and desaturated. I had watched the grainydays video on the stock and was expecting a lot more blue in my images. Could’ve been the conditions when I shot it (a few different ones, mind you - used it in both very sunny and quite overcast conditions) but I can’t say at first blush that I’m a fan of this stock. I’ll definitely come back to it as I have 2 more rolls, but I feel like shooting expired film is basically a similar look/feel to Lomo ‘92. Perhaps the shots will grow on me over time - these were shot only a few weeks ago. We’ll see.
Here’s 2025 Pat coming back to reflect on this roll of film. I just went back through the Google Drive folder housing these images, and my opinion above seems to hold. The film feels a little like it could thrive in the right application, but the right application eludes me. You lose some detail in the shadows, and it sucks the vibrance out of a summer day’s light. This being said, there are a couple compositions that I quite enjoy in my little folder. I think, next time, if I were to pretend I was shooting black and white, it might work out better. There’s a spooky quality that might be achieved in certain situations that could be fun.
As it turns out, I haven’t shot this film since the camping trip that the above canoe image came from. That probably puts an underscore on my opinion about it.
Returning to old work is always a bit of a trip. It’s a little like hearing old songs I wrote but that have never been recorded. I leave with questions of both “what was I thinking?” and also “Oh, that’s actually pretty good,” which is an interesting thing to hold at the same time. Maybe I’ll break out another roll of Lomo ‘92 soon. I’ve still got 2 sitting around.
And, in case you were wondering, 2025 me hasn’t figured out the answer to those questions in the middle there.
[Image developed and scanned at LeZot Camera in Burlington, which will be the case for all images until further notice. Pending if/when I learn to develop at home and invest in a scanner.]