My little boy at Tolmachoff Farms. Shot with my uncle’s Nikon FTn on 400TMAX, scanned directly from negative, no post-processing.

My uncle originally purchased this Nikon FTn with Photomic Finder 1971 in Japan

Even though I am old enough to have experienced the tail-end of film photography, I really hadn’t gotten into film despite the fact that one of my favorite Christmas presents was a Kodak Ektralite that used 110 film cartridges. I remember taking pictures as a little boy with it, as well as the excitement and anticipation of getting the negatives and prints back, just to see what I had captured and how the photos had turned out. This was really cool – except for the wait, it always seemed to take forever to get the photos back from the little photo shop where I used to drop off the film. After my encounter with the Kodak Ektralite I became too busy being a teenager and photography got put on hold and with that I missed “growing up” with film. Then in 1988, the first digital cameras started to grab a foothold in the photography-world. For most of us this was a blessing and today digital has become the dominant medium for creating images.

It would really suck not having a camera on your iPhone or Backberry, wouldn’t it? Images can be downloaded immediately and sent via email or posted on the internet instantaneously. With the advent of digital cameras came convenience, immediate gratification and automation. One can take a digital SLR and snap an exposure and immediately know whether you have a good exposure or not by looking at the screen on the back of the camera.

Like many photographers I have rediscovered photography after the glory-days of film and the most logical choice of camera when I bought mine of course was digital. Why bother with manual settings when digital cameras can figure out most everything for you? Only one thing left to do is to frame the shot and keep pressing the shutter button. Well, it was not quite that simple, but digital cameras have made creating images much easier. Easy is better, at least that is what I thought until I got my hands on a minty 1970′s Nikon FTn, a camera older than me and good enough to fly to the moon with Apollo 15. Wow, it was revolutionary back then, a camera with a light-meter right in the viewfinder with through the lens (TTL) metering, imagine that! A camera so simple with an instruction manual 35 pages long (not counting the separate instruction manual of the Photomic FTn Finder which is 25 pages). To put this in prospective, the instruction manual of my digital Nikon D300 is 421 pages long. I really had to wrap my mind around this fact, a camera so revolutionary back then, yet so basic and simple by today’s standards.

Shooting the first roll of film following a long hiatus, it became clear to me, again, how different the analog world is to the digital – in a good way. Yes, shooting film with an old camera can make things become less convenient, but the absence of the digital convenience makes you so much more mindful about the picture you are about to take. Just the fact that I had to remind myself to manually advance the film in the camera taught me the importance of paying attention and highlighted how lazy I have become. Being limited to one film speed, 11 shutter-speed-increments between 1 second to 1/1000 of a second and 8 f-stops on the lens combined with having to manually focus and having to be aware of changing light conditions while trying to capture moving subject matters forces one to think creatively and make quick decisions. In other words, my brain was forced to go through a complex syncratic process. Perhaps it can be called “Putting yourself in the analog state of mind”; making decisions based on your experience and knowledge, the condition and situation you are facing, processed between your ears with intuition, all without the help of a computer chip just before squeezing the shutter release button.

Since I did not really grow up using film I am unable to say that I missed it, however, I can say that I really enjoyed going backwards. I can also tell that shooting film is changing the way I see through the viewfinder. Compared to a digital camera you simply cannot be complacent, with film and an old camera you have to be alert, you have to focus, concentrate and anticipate, you simply cannot relax and rely on digital technology to do your job… which is why shooting film will help me become a better photographer.

This image was taken October 4th, 2009 near Desert Shores, California. My friend Krista was scouting for interesting subjects to photograph and when she briefly stopped for a quick look the composition of the image was complete.

A friend posing in an abandoned structure at the shore of the Salton Sea. This impromptu capture was taken in Bombay Beach, California during Harvest Moon. Krista was kind and brave enough to go inside this creepy place and pose to transform a spontaneous idea into a photograph.

photo credit: waltercolor

Tweetpress puts you in the driver seat when sharing your photos on Twitter

By now most of you at have heard of Twitter.com in some way, shape or form. It is kind of hard not to since this micro-blogging platform is literally everywhere including the mainstream media. From the three-letter news channels to the billboard next to the freeway – Twitter is everywhere… Most people use it for fun, some use it to stay in contact with friends, some people use it for marketing and broadcasting their message, and a select few even used it to try winning the presidential election.

Personally I have been on twitter since early 2008 and have become fond of sending images from my smartphone iPhone to share them with the “Twitterverse”. Until recently there was only one problem: Sending photos to Twitter required some kind of third party service like twitpic or yfrog. Regardless on how and whereto you upload the image you want to broadcast via Twitter, it has to be hosted somewhere and there has to be a URL in your tweet linking to that image, and since Twitter only allows you 140 characters per post, that link is better be short.

As I mentioned before there are a lot of free service who provide free image hosting, however using them you  potentially give up a little bit of freedom and control. You know, nothing is for free and most of the time you see some sort of subliminal advertisement next to that image you just snapped with your smart phone. Oh, and have you read the terms and conditions before you started sending your photo to a third party? But that is not all, guess where all the internet traffic goes? Bingo! You just sent your Twitter followers to some other place.

Now there is a solution to get a little bit more control on broadcasting images via Twitter on the internet if you use a self-hosted WordPress blog.  Tweetpress, a plugin for WordPress  by  Brandon Trebitowski, allows you not to worry about copyrights or licensing. You have total control and ownership of the images you share via Twitter, and probably the best of it all, there won’t be any questionable ads or commercials next to your images if you choose to do so.

As soon as I discovered this plugin I had to install it and so far I can see a lot of benefits.

• Full control over the images you post to Twitter
• Drive more traffic to your own website rather than some 3rd party site
• Customizable image gallery
• Maintain the rights to YOUR photos

But there are also following things to consider:

• Hosting your images will take up room on your server
• No commenting feature for each individual image.
• If you want to share images from your mobile device then you will need a twitter client/app which supports Tweetpress

So far I really like being in control over hosting my photos  (you can see my Twitter Pics here) I share via Twitter and I can see Tweetpress  to develop into a powerful traffic-booster.

Implementing TweetPress is fairly simple and you can find all the facts of TweetPress on Brandon’s blog or directly on Wordrpess.org. Heck, if I can do it then you can, too – just don’t forget to buy Brandon a cup of coffee.