After letting it sink it I am still revolted by it. I used to love to browse around and get inspired. Now it all just looks ugly. I open up the home page and my stomach turns.

Admittedly, I have realized that Flickr’s been dying a slow death several years. But I’ve held on, mostly because it has been a way for me to back up my photos. It will continue to serve that purpose. But I am not sure if it will continue to be a place where I will spend much time browsing and getting inspired.

That makes me sad. I’ve been a loyal Flickr user since 2005.  I feel like this might be the end. And that makes me sad.

Today I signed up at 500px and I like it. I might hang around there for awhile. My username over there is monismith if you want to hang out with me over there.

I mentioned Ben Chainey last week when I was talking about my Great Grandma Laura. Here is a photo of him. He is my Great-Great Grandfather. I see my older brother and my niece in his face.

I also think he has the kindest eyes. Just looking at this picture, I can tell he was a good soul. I wish I could meet him.

He owned a shop in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho way back in the olden days when the town was first starting out.

I have something that was his. An old button tin. It originally was a cigar tin that belong to Ben Chainey. Eventually it turned into a button tin used by my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, and now me. It is probably the oldest thing I own.

The project has become too unruly for my iPhone so today I uploaded what I have to Youtube and will start saving the videos on my computer.

So, for your enjoyment, I present One Second Everyday in 2013 (so far).

There are a couple that I am especially happy about. One of them is my Grandpa Ed’s Honeywell Pentax.

When I got the camera it had film in it. I was very excited to discover this. Unfortunately I discovered this when I opened the back, exposing all of the lost cherished memories. I decided to finish off the roll anyway but I didn’t know how to use the camera and made really odd exposures so nothing turned out on the roll at all. I got to endure the ridicule of the Walgreens “Photo Expert.” So that was fun.

However, when I fall down I pick myself back up and try again. I loaded it up with cheap drugstore Fuji Film, and armed with knowledge gleaned from the operating manual, I was off and running!

I brought it to work and shot the entire roll on my walk home in the evening, finishing it off with a slightly-drunken evening stroll with the Mr. later on. Dropped it off at Walgreens and an hour later I had the results.

omygoodness I am very happy. I think my grandfather’s camera and I will get along just fine.

My shots were taken in Santa Cruz & San Francisco. His were taken at the Grand Canal in Dublin, Ireland. Again. if you are interested in participating get in touch with him! It’s fun and easy. Just shoot a roll of film & pop it in the mail. I am also down, too, if you are interested in sending film my way. I am in possession of a film leader retrieval tool so I am able to expose over your roll of film if you are so inclined. Just let me know by leaving a comment on this post.

OK. Now for a bit of a rant discussion about some questions that have been raised about this project. Feel free to stop here and enjoy the photos or click “Continue Reading” to read the rest of the post.

As you can tell, I am very enthusiastic about this project. It’s fun to creatively collaborate with another person in a medium that I love – film photography. That this person lives on the whole other side of the planet makes it that much more interesting and intriguing to me. It is like having a pen pal except with photography. Since I am so enthusiastic about it I share it with people around me. Somebody asks “How was your weekend, Monica?” I say, “Great! Let me show you what I’m doing” and I pull my iPad out of my bag and there you go. The response has been very positive all around, which is good. However, there are a few questions that people have asked that raise my hackles a little bit and I want to address them here.

It goes something like this: They look at a few photos and ask about the process. I tell them the process and then they say something like, “so he isn’t manipulating them in Photoshop?” And I say, “No, he’s not because blah blah blah.” Then they say something else related to Photoshop and then I tend to change the subject because the question irks me a little. I feel like this line of questioning is confrontational. I think the people who ask these things are not intending to be that way but it feels that way from my perspective. The conversation tends toward me being on the defensive and that makes me uncomfortable.

I also feel,  when I am defending the process, that I am throwing my fellow photographers and photo manipulation artists (including my husband) under the bus. The question comes up regarding Photoshop like it is a bad thing and it is not a bad thing. At all. Photoshop is a very valid and necessary tool in the photographer’s arsenal. I am touchy about this because I have been given shit for using Photoshop. I don’t understand this at all. Anybody who has done darkroom work knows that photography doesn’t end when you push the shutter. There is also work to be done in the darkroom. When I make prints I spend a great deal of time playing with filters, as well as dodging and burning. Photoshop is built upon these darkroom principles! So there. Every photographer, be it film or digital, does some kind of post processing.

Having said that, let’s take this one step further: artistic photo manipulation  is a very valid form of the art. And, again, photo manipulation is done in both the darkroom and Photoshop. AND it is done without either of those things, which is what the film swap project is about. Photo manipulation is happening in the camera. We are manipulating the photo by double exposing the roll. There are many ways to double expose. Our project is random and, sometimes, serendipitous. Could we get these results in photoshop? Yes we could. Would it take hours and hours of work to do that? Yes it would! Would it be a valid expression of art? YES IT WOULD.  However, this is NOT the way OUR project happens to work.

So let’s talk a little bit about photo manipulation. I am not an expert on it, but I have tried it a few times with interesting results (in addition to the film swap).

As I mentioned, one way to manipulate results is to double expose. There are several ways to double expose a photo. One of these ways is to simply shoot a roll of film, rewind, pull out the leader and run it through the camera again. The film swap project is based on this principle. As I mentioned, the results are random and sometimes serendipitous.  However you can try to plan your shots to create certain effects. My friend Nick double exposed a portrait of his wife and a photo of flowers to create this beautiful portrait.

You can also double expose in the darkroom or on a film scanner by stacking negatives. This process is less random because you can plan ahead by choosing specific photos to stack. You can see an example of my own experiment with this in the darkroom and on a film scanner. Note: this was not easy to do. It took thought and planning and a lot of trial and error, as well as time. 

You could also double expose in Photoshop, I imagine. I am not familiar with this process and I don’t know anyone who has done it so I don’t have an example to link to. My thought  on that is it  is not really something a Photoshop artist would be interested in doing. There are other ways to work magic on photos in Photoshop that these artists gravitate toward. Note: my friend Jennifer (AKA The Photoshop Queen) was inspired by this post and decided to try multi-exposures in Photoshop. It turned out really cool!! So now I know someone who has done this. Yay!

My friend Dave is one of these artists. He does amazing work in Photoshop and I am always blown away by his photo manipulations. My friend Jennifer is another amazing Photoshop artist (as well as photographer). Her work was featured in Photoshop User Magazine! My husband is really good too. I would link to his stuff but he doesn’t have any of it online.

There. I got all of that off of my chest and I feel better. In short: Photoshop, and photo manipulation in general,  is all good and a very valid expression of the craft. The End.