Tim Soter… blog.

It is, however, a difficult time to keep this (and other) processes consistent.

Fuji Frontier machines are few and far between, and they’re the best 4×6 print machines that are available as far as I can tell.  Instead of getting true photographic Type C prints from The Fuji Frontier machine however, it actually does a quick scan of the negative and prints from that, making a “digital C Type print.”  There are ways to get solid results from it but in truth they’ll never match the luscious candy quality of a true Type C print, which is what all of the 4×6 prints were when I began using the Olympus Stylus 35mm.

Still, right now for me this is photography.

This work (see previous post) was shot with no preconceived or previsioned notion of the work’s purpose, who the viewer/audience was or what the end goal would be.  I recently spent two straight weeks editing six full boxes of 4×6 prints and their accompanying negatives.  I’ve done a rough edit, narrowing selects down to approximately seventy-five images.

The reward and surprise is… there is a wonderful consistency to the work.  It’s got a subtle humor and sensibility to it that just came about from instinct and a lack of over thinking.  This last achievement is in this instance accidental and rare, it’s easy for photographers to try and think their way out instead of shooting their way out.  (See Duane Michals quote below.)

I had tried switching over to a digital point and shoot, a Canon G9 which I used for a year and a half, abandoning the Olympus film camera.  I felt some peer pressure, seemingly coming from everywhere to shoot digitally… it’s cheaper, it’s easy to share, it’s faster.  During that time I grew to hate my digital point and shoot because there were too many variables, it was heavy, the shutter delay was frustrating and the files lacked the smooth and subtle romance of 4×6 prints.  I still carried on and while I was using it I actually had dreams in which I was using my Olympus Stylus and I’m not being poetic here – I was actually using the camera in my dreams.  And then one day it made sense.  If I’ve chosen photography as my passion and profession why am I abandoning the longest running process that I’ve been able to establish?  And when I say establish I mean that I founded a relationship just on comfortability and long term ease and enjoyment.

The Stylus works with me, like an extension.  I look through the viewfinder and sometimes decide NOT to make a photo.  When I see things through that rectangle I know what the finished product will look like almost exactly, there are no variables.   By eliminating the variables I’ve watered it all down to just making pictures.  And the pictures that I’ve made (for me anyway) seem to reflect that.

The process is as follows.

I carry around an Olympus Stylus Epic 35mm film camera, loaded with Fuji 400 Superia negative film, and I keep it in a waterproof ziplock baggie with one extra roll. I look when I’m walking around.  I keep me eyes open, but in a relaxed way, it’s not a hunt – more of a “find” when something comes along.  I shoot slowly, on average it takes about three weeks to get through a roll of 36 exposures.  Then I drop it off at a lab that runs it through a Fuji Frontier machine; the film is developed, I get back two sets of 4×6 prints on glossy paper with white borders. And then apparently it ages in boxes for years until this past month.

The above photo a flatbed scan of a 4×6 print.