Tuesday, January 22, 2008

I switch to digital, and this is what happens.

I used to be a die-hard film gal. Hated the darkroom for some reason, but loved shooting with film. I'd buy all sorts of kinds and just play around. I even bought a few rolls of infrared just for grins and giggles.

But I never really did anything with them. I had a thing going, I needed certain things. I had go-to, trustworthy film, and clients who weren't paying for experimentation. But I was going through 40-50 rolls of film per shoot, and I knew I had to go to the dark side.

So I bought the Nikon D200 a few years ago. I LOVE it. So much faster. So much freedom! It was great for what I was trying to do. It has served me well.

Well, now that I shoot fashion, I'm trying to teach myself the language of the genre, studying modeling (I can pose. Who knew?), lighting, and what the best photos say. I still have a lot to learn, but I want to make things a little different. So while I was home in DC, I was going through all my old photo books, and it hit me--color infrared fashion shots! Brilliant! It couldn't be editorial, since the garments would be completely distorted, but they'd look freakin' awesome. So I plan the shoot. I buy the clothing. I get the hair, makeup, and models. I go to buy the film.

Kodak discontinued its color infrared film a few months ago. Monochrome infrared will soon be departing, too.

WTF?! You can't discontinue infrared film! It's not like you can really, truly replicate it with Photoshop or something--it's unique! It's special! Damn you, Kodak!

So, the shoot. I've purchased two really cool-looking toy cameras, some expired film, and we'll see what happens. The shoot is Sunday, the equipment hasn't arrived yet. Today's shoot has been postponed to Saturday (I think), and Friday's model bailed, so I'm out looking for a hot acrobat. Such is life.

5 Comments:

Blogger DC Discombobulated said...

Can I shoot you shooting? It would be a dream come true since i have been following your site for so long.

8:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've never tried this, but I have heard of companies converting digital cameras to infrared. Of course, you need a spare digital camera, and the process isn't cheap. Here's one company I found.,,
http://www.irdigital.net/

8:49 PM  
Blogger Samantha Wolov said...

dc--that might be tricky. one, i'm in california. two, the shoots are really quite boring. "move your hips inward, move your right foot six inches to the right, no, the other right, DON'T MOVE!"

paul--people on model mayhem told me something similar. there are some cool alternatives out there that i'd like to try for now, and when i have a good sense of what i want to shoot, i'll use my two IER rolls.

3:48 PM  
Blogger rich said...

try cross-processing. its definitely not as cool as the color variation with color infrared, but you can get create color variance with it.

7:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

wow

9:14 PM  

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