This semester, I am taking ART-316 Advanced Black and White Photography with Peter Nardone. Over the semester, we have been taking black-and-white photos on 35mm film and 120mm film. I have been really enjoying the process of film, as it’s fun and experimental. Getting used to doing work in the dark was an easy adjustment, and I find it calming to be in a dark room.

For our first film assignment, we took photos on our 35mm film cameras. We have no limit to our subject matter so to get the feel of taking photos with film I chose nature as my subject. I went to Nay-Aug Park to take these photos since it was a nice day out. Even though I have three photos shown here, it took me many tries to print these. It took many trials and errors to get a good exposure. I learned how to dodge a photo manually, which is a tool used in Photoshop to lighten a part of the photo.

For our next assignment, we had to take our photos on the 120 film camera. I chose my subject to be my friend Kelly since I enjoy taking portraits. With 120mm film, you only get 12 exposures so it was a little tricky to remember not to waste any shots. When I take photos on my digital camera, I take way too many photos until I get the right one so that was a new adjustment. Another difficulty I faced was the lighting. When I was first taking her photos, the lighting was specular and then became diffused. When printing my photos, I had to play around with changing the aperture and time to get the right exposure.

Overall, I enjoy taking photos on film. When we did our assignment for our 120 mm film, I was able to use my grandpa’s Yashica Mat camera and luckily it was in really good condition. I can see myself still continuing to shoot with film after taking this class this semester. I love getting to make experiments and try to problem-solve my exposures.

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