Fred Fraser Commercial Photographer

I miss shooting film. I regret that I sold the RZ years ago when people stopped resisting digital photography and started demanding it. I miss loading film holders and the very satisfying sound they make as they are seated in front of the ground glass of the 4×5. I miss the sound of mechanical shutters. I miss the nervous excitement of laying out the trannies on the light table to see the shoot results.

I don’t miss the taste of film tabs on roll film. I don’t miss the stink of just developed Polaroid, and I don’t miss the ton of garbage that working with film and Polaroid generated, and I don’t miss the guilt of knowing about the disgusting chemistry I was helping to create and flush.

I have a small amount of Polaroid left over from the film days and I still have my student quality Sinar I bought almost 20 years ago. There was a time when I shot portraits on the 4×5 – as well as food. So for the second time this year I hauled all of it out to relive the ol’ days. Shooting one frame at a time is such a different pace then shooting digital it’s almost seems as though the two processes should have different names – photography … and still image recording …

The Polaroid film I used for this shoot was 7 years past its “use by” date. I could tell some of it was not usable by feeling the pouch that holds the developer fluid – it was solid and crunchy. The sheets that felt as though they were still viable were few. As a result, with one exception, I took no more then three frames of each set up. I discovered after the first shot that a little massaging and “cooking” in front of an electric heater was required to get the image to develop nicely. After seeing some successful shots I hurt my elbow patting myself on the back.

Strange that years ago, if I had pulled a Polaroid that had yielded the crazy color and stains that these images have, I would have thrown it away and made another one in order to be able to evaluate the scene I was about to commit to film. In these days digital photographers try by the thousands to recreate images that look like these Polaroids using Photoshop and Painter. I have also seen other treatments that are intended to look like light leaks, film fogging and images made from cheap plastic lenses. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, there is some wonderful and original artwork being made that way. I don’t believe the process used to create an image has any bearing on its worth.

I find it ironic that almost in the same moment that we obtain the technology to make flawless reproductions so many people use that technology to try and create images with all the appearance of the flaws that the technology so easily overcomes. It makes me wonder why more people aren’t putting wagon wheels on their cars instead of flashy chrome spinners.

It is interesting to note in the blogsphere the growing numbers of photographers making similar comments about moving away from a digital workflow and returning to film. Certainly for me making digital captures does not impart the same feeling of craftsmanship that working on a film camera does. Not having the instant feedback the digital workflow provides forces my inner eye open again and makes it necessary to marry all the technical knowledge about exposure and optics with my artistic intentions for the image in order to create the photograph I am after.

I was intrigued to notice how much more involved the people I was photographing became when they were in front of the large format camera. Partly in response to the novelty of it I would guess, but I think they were also impressed by the obvious effort it took me to play my part as a photographer and felt inspired to work a little harder at giving something back to the process of creating the image in the role of the subject.

Having said all this however, I don’t think there is any doubt that the digital workflow will remain the primary mode of creating photographs. I do think there will always be a place for film – for the satisfaction the use of it gives, but also, there will always be film “looks” that digital will only ever mimic, but never recreate; in the same way that a Cd will never truly reproduce the organic sound of a record, a digital camera will never truly reproduce the organic feel of a photo from film.

More images here.

Ok, not really.

More images here.

I like to shoot “stuff” too. Food is a lot of fun even though it’s kind of finicky and I enjoy the challenge of shiny stuff ( … sometimes after that fact ….), but the best thing about shooting “stuff” is that you get to work with people.

However, for me, the Canada Grade A shoot will always be one where there is a person in front of the lens, and the best kind of people to have in front of the lens are the ones whose personalities are so big that they leak out of their bodies and all over my camera.

I have shot many interesting and good looking people over the years, and some of them I just keep coming back to. Like Erica:

Yes, that “light” is exactly what you think it is. I like to experiment with light – I think of lighting in four variables: quality, quantity, color and direction. Sometimes the equipment manufactures just don’t make a light that does what I want … So I make it. Sometimes, of course, I’m too cheap to go out and buy the real thing.

A behind the scenes snap from a shoot (“Big Hair”) coming to a newsstand near you …

From Joanna Kulpa’s fall collection. Try and guess where this exotic location is …

In a quest for new ways to torture models and stylists I thought I would try shooting on a set that was rotated 45 degrees. I anticipated that it would force different poses and prop configurations. My personal jury is hung on the result.