Contact Sheets

FINALLY, I threw myself back into the darkroom and started whipping out the contact sheets for the 11 rolls of film from my recent travels to Europe. It only took about 3 1/2 hours to complete the task. I normally use RC paper for my contact sheets, no sense in wasting the FB paper on those. I had just enough to make 10 sheets, then had to break into the FB paper for the last one!! As you may already know, it takes a longer development time for the FB paper, and it's just the contact sheets.

There are some pretty cool shots in those thar rolls of film. I was surprised I didn't have very many black and whites of Venice - dangit. But apparently I made up for it in the color photos, as well as black and whites of the other cities. In reviewing the negatives, I noticed that (as I was expecting) some of the pictures from Santorini were way, way overexposed. It was in the middle of the day, it was sunny and hot and bright light bouncing off all those white buildings, even though I stopped it down as far as I could, there were several that were pretty washed out. Then on two other rolls, there would be say one out of the whole roll that was a complete wash, which tends to make me think something is/was wrong with the camera. Maybe it was me?? I just had two of the Minolta bodies worked on, so I don't know what that was all about. I'll have to keep an eye on it - pay more attention as I'm shooting.

I can't say enough about film v. digital. In my opinion, the film captures what is TRULY there: the shadows, the mystery that's seen with the naked eye. Digital captures a MORE perfect scene, then some photographers go back and add the mystery. I mean I took digital black and whites too, and they look good, but not as GREAT as the film images. It's weird. I suppose if I only knew digital to begin with my opinion would be different.

Here's another color image of Cephalonia, Greece. The building was actually a yellow-gold, but the canvas canopy was reddish-orange and it made this shop really pop out! Later, I saw another photographer being intrigued with this same scene.