Shoot Film Co. — Interviews

Sunny 16 Podcast: ROUND 2

Sunny 16 Podcast: ROUND 2

The dedicated and prolific gang over at the Sunny 16 Podcast allowed me to be a guest on their show yet again, this time to help judge the Cheap Shots Challenge. It's nice chunky one so make sure your morning commute is long and your coffee cup is full.

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In the Frame: Caroline Aro

In the Frame: Caroline Aro

ShootFilmCo In the Frame: Caroline Aro

All Images © Caroline Aro. All rights reserved.

Caroline's Website / Instagram

My name is Caroline and I live just outside of Washington DC. I only recently picked up a camera but instantly fell in love. I started out with my dad's old Minolta XG-M back at the end of summer 2017.

It can be pretty difficult to find a good film developing service that is convenient and affordable, so I decided that I would teach myself. Since November, I have been developing film at home for myself and for my friends.

I've been been collecting point & shoots and SLRs from thrift stores all across the country during some travels. I have been slowly teaching myself how to fix them up. There is a lot to learn but I eventually want to know a little bit about every aspect of film photography; from the way the camera is built, to the processing of film.

There's something about film that I just love. The entire process, the look and the feel. The anticipation to see your work after finishing a roll of film. I love that I can be involved in every step of the way.

Right now I've stuck with my dad's Minolta XG-M and the lenses he gave me with it; a Vivitar 28-50mm and a 50mm prime lens.

It's been a great reliable camera for me and I love that it came from my dad. He used it in a lot of his travels back in the 80s and I look forward to using it in all of my travels (and everyday life) as well.

I love finding and testing all of the cameras I've come across. Maybe because it's what I started with, but I've noticed I'm a bit partial towards Minoltas!

ShootFilmCo In the Frame: Caroline Aro

Two of the photos that I'm in obviously weren't taken by me; my boyfriend used my camera. However, I developed all of these photos myself. They were all taken with my Minolta XG-M

This January, I went on a trip to Iceland with my parents and my boyfriend. We stayed in a hotel in Reykjavik with this great spiral staircase. Definitely had to snap these first to shots.

This was a gas station literally in the middle of nowhere in Iceland. It had just been so windy and snowy all day. I don't know what it is but I love the way gas stations look at night. Maybe it's the lighting contrasts or something. We learned a fun fact though; this gas station was on the left side of the road, which didn't entirely make sense since we drove on the right. It turns out that up until the 60s or 70s, people in Iceland drove on the left side of the road until they all of a sudden changed it! Apparently it was just "Okay on such and such day, this is when the law goes into effect and we're switching how we drive. Have fun!" We heard it took a bit of getting used to.

ShootFilmCo In the Frame: Caroline Aro

This is a low-key popular spot near where I live to get some cool pictures. This stretch of road is lined by these big old trees and is surrounded by fields. It was a crazy windy day and I caught this shot of my boyfriend and the pup running back to the car. It didn't turn out very crisp or clear - someone actually commented it looks like a painting in a way. I really like that it's not "perfect", you know? It's a cool look to me.

ShootFilmCo In the Frame: Caroline Aro

I surprised my boyfriend with a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras this year. I'm not into partying or going too crazy, but I was just so excited for the atmosphere and the people-watching. I awkwardly made my way on top of this wobbly trash can to get the next photo. In the meantime, my boyfriend caught this one of me! The energy was so high and everyone was having such a good time. It was so incredible to get it from a higher perspective and I'm glad I got this shot of the crowd from there.

ShootFilmCo In the Frame: Caroline Aro

The next photo is from our last day in New Orleans. We went to the sculpture garden in the morning. This piece is called Karma and it's by Do Ho Suh. It must have been at least 20 feet tall. It was a seemingly endless chain of figures with their hands over the eyes of the figure before him. Even though the colors got a bit weird when I developed this picture, I still really like how it turned out, and this is definitely my favorite sculpture from the gardens!

ShootFilmCo In the Frame: Caroline Aro

All Images © Caroline Aro. All rights reserved.

In The Frame: Jaclyn Snook

In The Frame: Jaclyn Snook

All photos © Jaclyn Snook

Heyo, I am a 26 year-old hobby photographer born and raised in Sacramento, California.

What I remember most about my childhood is my Dad constantly taking photos. I picked up this habit around age eleven mainly carrying around disposable cameras everywhere I went. In middle school my dad gave me his digital Kodak EasyShare so I used to rally all my girlfriends over for sleepovers where we would style each other and I would take portraits of everyone. During my Freshman year of high school I used to get picked on for having pale legs in my PE shorts so I used to ditch PE to sneak into the school’s darkroom and learn black and white photo processing. I really liked how it felt to control light on paper and create photos in a way I never had before.


I moved to San Francisco to attend SF State at the age of eighteen and felt a kind of strange social pressure being a college freshman. I found it overwhelming; constantly meeting new and interesting people and trying to be your best self while also learning a lot about who you are and what you care about. I developed (no pun intended) a strange comfort in being able to rely on communicating via photos. When at house parties or shows (or in nearly any social situation) I liked taking the outside-looking-in approach. I’m a very extroverted person with social anxiety so I realized that if I left the day/night with some great photos, I would share them to show appreciation for my friends in different way and it really soothed me.

Overall, nowadays, I mainly lean towards candid portraits of loved ones, self-portrait photography, and roaming the streets snapping photos of strangers/strange scenes.

I spent the last two years in London and currently reside in Oakland, CA
I learned photography by taking photos with disposable cameras at a young age. I then learned dark room development in high school. So I guess I am attracted to photographing with film because it is nostalgic. It feels good, it is a constant in my life.
I recently (finally) got my hands on a little Olympus Stylus Epic which has been a game changer for taking photos out in public since it is discrete and fits in my pocket. However, my go-to for the last six years is my Canon Rebel 2000 with a 50mm 1.8 lens. I have started to play around with shooting more at night and in low-light with 1600 speed films such as Fuji Superia and Fuji Natura

In The Frame: Lauren Keim

In The Frame: Lauren Keim

Lauren Keim

 

All photos © Lauren Keim

I teach digital photography classes, and I tell this story to my intro students about how until 2007, I broke or lost every camera I owned. College trip to Greece? Broke the camera. Move across the country? Broke the camera. Son's birth? Forgot the camera. Move *back* across the country? Dropped camera in a creek.

In 2007 my dad who is not an optimist but who is an enabler got me a Canon Digital Rebel, and I still have it! I banged around on my own for awhile, took my first class in 2010, and I now teach the classes that I took.

I'm a southerner. I grew up in the mountains of Tennessee and after some years away from the south, we now live in Virginia, a couple blocks from the Chesapeake Bay. Growing up in the south, I couldn't wait to get out, and even after 14 years I kind of can't believe we're back. But Virginia is beautiful, and the Tidewater is beautiful, a stone's throw from marshes, the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay. We love it here.


Our bayside home feels full, with three humans (my husband, our son and me) and three bad dogs, but when I need room to breathe, I can always grab my camera and head to the beach.

I'm drawn to film because of process and product. First off, the colors and tones of film can't be beat. There is a richness to film images that gets my heart beating faster every time. And once you're shooting medium format or larger, your images start to look three-dimensional. What's not to love?

I'm much more process oriented than product oriented, and for me, shooting film is all about the process. It slows me down and forces me to shoot with intention. I think about each shot. I take care. My shooting has become more reflective, and I like how that shows in my work.

My Pentax 645n is my workhorse camera. It's the one I trust the most when I *need* to get the shot or when I'm in a place where I'll never get back to. I don't even have to think about this camera.

But let's face it. It's steady, and we all need steady, but it's not exciting! And I love playing with other, older cameras. My favorite medium format camera to reach for right now is my Rolleiflex 2.8. In a lot of ways, this camera feels like my soul mate. I have long loved the square format and the structure it brings my images, and the Rollei just feels right in my hands.



Because we live by the water, my all time favorite camera to reach for in the summer is my Nikonos V. This underwater beauty is built like a tank and takes everything, from sand to snow, that I throw at it. I love that I have no expectations except surprises when I get rolls from this camera developed, and I generally adore the water shots it gives me.

You'll generally find Fuji 400h or Superia loaded in my cameras. I accidentally stumbled on my favorite way to shoot and develop, which is rating it at box speed and then pushing two in development for contrast. I'm trying to fall in love with P400, but it just hasn't happened yet.


Someone asked me this week what I like to shoot, and I had a hard time answering. I feel like I'm at a crossroads with my work. I have long been a still life photographer, starting with food, when I was a digital shooter, and moving on to other things as I transitioned to film. We moved to a new house a year and a half ago, and I left my beloved studio space behind. It's taken an adjustment, and I definitely shoot differently here. We live by the Chesapeake Bay now, and I'm drawn to the light here, especially the play of light on the water. When I was shooting still life, I wanted even steady light and I was hesitant around strong directional light and sharp shadows. I may have lost my studio (for awhile at least!), but I gained a sense of exploration and a willingness to experiment that I'm not sure I had before. Now I find myself looking for light that plays along the water and strong silhouettes and shadows. My favorite images are ones that bring the relationship between the sun, the land and the bay to life and show the connection among them all.

In The Frame: Lozzie Kennedy

In The Frame: Lozzie Kennedy

In The Frame is a series exploring and showcasing the work and methods of artists all over the world shooting film.

Lozzie Kennedy: Website / Instagram

Tell us who you are and where you're from.

I'm a young lady from the shores of a small city in north western Pennsylvania. I, like most..if not all, had a grandmother. Her and I would watch reruns of I love Lucy and the Carol Burnett show. -side note, we also snuck in donuts for our viewing snack pleasures. Why sneak around some sweets, you ask? So that my grampa didn't comment on our health. WILD! right?! Anywho, these shows pleased me so much, from the theatrics, the studio props and costumes to saturated contrast and the juicy colors (with Carol B). At my young age I already knew I liked what I saw and that I wanted to make THAT happen in my life. I had a Vivitar retro panoramic 35mm and one of my first photos that I remember taking with it was a portrait of my gram. She was sat on the peach colored, floral couch in the spare room, where we would watch our shows and eat smuggled sweets. Sadly, I do not know where this image is, as I was probably 8yrs old when capturing it and then stuffed the print in an album somewhere. Fingers crossed I rediscover it someday!



Let's get academic, shall we? from the moments with my vivitar up through high school, I was always capturing scenes around me or setting up my stuffed animals to be my models. High school didn't offer photo (they turned the dark room into a supply closet) but I did attend a university and despite rubbing elbows with student loans for the rest of my human existence, all in all I'm glad I did it.

After all the fun, late studio nights, getting dark room munchies (I swear it's a real thing!) I came outta the grind with a BFA (oooo) main focus on fine art photography! but also dabbled in areas of printmaking, ceramics, 2D animation, and graphic design. All of those mediums did & still do help me pull inspiration(s) from so much of the creative process.

I moved across the United States to follow a desire of new surroundings, experiences, faces – a change in pace. After residing in sunny Los Angeles, California for a bit the opportunity to relocate to Nashville, Tennessee came about. I continue to look for exciting career/life/human/creative options and challenges to better advance my knowledge in the photo/creative media world. Now I shoot with both film and digital, I like them both so much! each offering a spread of excitement with never ending possibilities.

Never still for long, the Chicago chapter will take me through even more worlds of collaborations and obstacles to exert the boundaries of photographic frame!

What attracts you to photographing with film?

Definitely setting up the shot & seeing the light! Shooting film really changes how I perceive the natural lighting that happens all around us. I find myself getting dizzy from it, at times. I wanna drink it in gulps, get drunk off the reflections that blind me and disappear within the shadows then reappear through a window then bounces off buildings & puddles. When you have limited shots on your 24, 27 or 36 exposure roll you cherish each moment.

One of my life long mentors, Henri Cartier Bresson said a wonderful thing “The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.”

What type of gear/film do you tend to gravitate to as of this writing?

Canon EOS Rebel Ti 35mm
Pentax P3 35mm
Minolta Pocket pak/440E 110mm
Polaroid 600
Meikai Refrax "the four shooter"

I love Kodak Gold ISO 200 but I will shoot some fuji ISO 400 for my color shots.
For black and white Ilford Delta 400 & Kodak 400 T-max.

About the images:

Image one: Taken while seeing exhibits in Los Angeles, Arts District. The galleries and exhibits themselves were pretty great, although, I took a liking to this raw, gritty old phone booth. Tagged and drawn all over by passing artists and visitors to the city, to me..this captures the essence of the arts district. My own private viewing!

Image two: Taken on my way through the small town of my university in PA. Not a lot of process leading up to it, other than I simply can not pass up a deep tree shadow against a lightly painted building with windows.

Image three: Taken at the women's march in January 2017, Nashville. A group of young ladies, rallying together. Those girls captured the feeling, the up and coming adults of this country, there is so much that needs done to pave the way for them and if they continue to stand together, like in this photo..they're gonna be A-ok! (a nice thought, at least, let's hope!) I walked beside them for a few paces, heard them speak and then jumped ahead of them and said "you ladies get it!, gather around & let's capture this beautiful moment!"