NYCWLK Recap: Aka #HeroSquad

I attended the inaugural NYCWLK in mid-September and I have to say that I think it was a resounding success. The weekend, organized by Johnny Patience, Rebecca Lily & Bijan Sabet,  included a three hour workshop about general film photography principles and the creative process lead by Johnny Patience, a leisurely photowalk from SoHo to Brooklyn capped off by dinner and drinks. Attendees could choose to attend a combination of the three portions of the day and I gladly went for all three.

The three hour workshop to kick off the day was a laid back and informal discussion about the virtues of film photography, general techniques and practices as well as a more  discussion of the creative process in general and how a photographer can establish their voice and push the evolution of their work. It was also filled with tidbits of Johnny's philosophical genius delivered in a until then unknown incredibly entertaining (to me) accent. German born with a long stint in Ireland makes for a fantastic linguistic style and all the more reason to meet this man in person. His commitment to sharing the breadth of knowledge he has accumulated about photography and life with others is an incredible asset to the global photo community, and the impact of those efforts could be found throughout the entire NYCWLK day. The instant camaraderie, humility and the genuine interest in each other shared amongst the attendees was easily my favorite aspect of the walk. It just goes to show that building a solid community around your core values and interests will attract likeminded souls no matter where you go.

Photographically speaking, this was easily one of the least productive trips to NYC I have ever had, but I preferred it that way. This trip was more about taking the time to connect with attendees, some of which I have been corresponding with or following on the innanets for YEARS! (huge shout out to Shawn Hoke!) as well as soaking up the vast amount of collective knowledge shared by the group as a whole. I think my favorite part was tying one on with the WLKers after dinner. We all got hammered and dished on film, projects, life and everything in between. It was seriously epic and will be one of my great memories of 2015.

Travel for me is always a bit of a double edged sword, always trying to find the delicate balance between leisure and photo hunting. If I photograph a lot I regret not directing more energy towards the friends or family I am there to visit in the first place. If I ease off the photo throttle I look back at the meager pool of captured images with a desire for more..I should have pushed harder or gone further, etc.

But, I purposely went into this weekend with actual image making on the back burner. Even though it was a trip technically devoted to photography. Weird, huh? Looking back though, I think I came away with more than if I buried my face into a viewfinder and tried to shoot the days away. Even in the off hours I was more concerned with the city itself and not necessarily how it photographed.

Anyway, too much rambling and not enough content. One of the great technical takeaways from the weekend was a forced adherence to Johnny's theory of metering for film; a theory that concentrates on recording ample information in the shadow areas of a scene and letting the highlights do as they wish. This is counter to exposure theory for digital cameras, since a blown highlight on a digital sensor is basically just a block of unusable information so photographers must be careful to not overexpose when using a digital camera. The opposite rings true for Johnny's technique that crams as much usable information as possible into the shadows and let's the extreme dynamic range of color negative and true black and white films reel in "blown" highlights. Major takeaway from the workshop: "overexposed" film simply makes for denser negatives and the lights built into professional scanners, when wielded by the right technicians, have the ability to plow through really dense (overexposed) negatives and produce spectacular images.

I shot about 40 frames of Tri-X during my trip and developed & scanned the negatives at home. Metering for the shadows naturally lead to some really dense (read: dark) negatives and I was a little weary of how they would fare in my humble Pacific Image 7200 film scanner.

I'm talking DENSE: a photo of my sleeved NYCWLK negs to show how dark (dense) they are. These were hit with a ton of light when originally exposed. 

The hobbyist Pacific Image 7200 (also known as the Reflecta Proscan 7200, depending on the country) isn't the superstar Nuritsu or Frontier scanners touted by Johnny and the professional film photography world, but I was pleasantly surprised at its ability to work through the super dense Tri-X I fed it from the NYCWLK. Would I use this scanner for color film? No way. But it can churn through true black and white films with adequate success.

Final version of "Colbert" (frame 18 in the sleeve above) 

Highlights transition to mid-tones in an infinitely abundant shades of powdery whites and grays with enough room to build some deep blacks into the shadows with Lightroom.

All in all, Great Success!

The #NYCWLK -ers, moments after I dropped my 35SP

Be sure to check in on the #NYCWLK hashtags on twitter and instagram from time to time, as attendees slowly share their results from the weekend. (It was a collective of film photographers; nothing's immediate!)