I'm so glad you found me! I'm a San Francisco photographer, and this blog charts my journey in the ever-evolving world of photography. One of the things I love about photography is that it's a journey, not a destination. I'm constantly learning and meeting wonderful people. Please peruse the blog to your heart's content, then check out my website and feel free to contact me! (I love hearing from you.)

“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow." – Imogen Cunningham

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” – Edward Steichen

Light and Shadow (Film on a Friday)

I started out with my roll of Fuji Neopan 400 (a black and white film) in my film camera at a bit of a loss as to what to do.

Now, that's not to say that I'm uncomfortable with black and white. On the contrary, I love it. Black and white calms things down, filters out distractions, and makes a moment feel timeless.

It's elegant.

But choosing which color digital photograph to make black and white is not the same thing as visualizing a picture that has to be all in shades of gray.

I worried about my subjects, about contrast, about blown highlights and blocked shadows and everything being the same shade of dull gray . . . . I made a hobby out of worrying. And the roll of 36 exposures seemed to stretch out in front of me forever. I was always going to have that dang roll of black and white film that I didn't know what to do with in the camera.

But I thought of a few tricks. One of them being, patterns of light and shadow. That always looks good in black and white, right?



And I think it kind of worked out. I don't love all of them, and I feel kind of like I'm missing the midtones, but  I am happy with the feel of the images.



I also purposely kept a 35mm lens on the camera the whole time, as another constraint for my creativity. Mostly I think it was a good idea, but the types of scenes I envisioned with a 35mm (bustling street scenes, moody portrait shots), for most of these I was too unsure about the result to go ahead and take the picture. So I don't know if the focal length was the right call after all.



Anyway, if you had a roll of black and white in the camera, what would you take photographs of?