It has been months since the last installment of my “Roll of film” blog posts. There seems to be a curious, in some ways inverse, relationship between the time of year and my “productivity” as a photographer.

Summer is the time of year with most daylight, the nicest temperatures and generally the time of your where I spend the most time outside. But for some reason I shoot less during summer than during winter. I bring my camera along a lot of the time, but I do not feel as motivated to create artful images as I do during winter. I find that quite strange.

Once they daylight starts to fade, as I am forced to spend more time indoor, my motivation to pick up my camera and shoot increases.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that during summer my main interest is riding my old motorcycles and once that is no longer possible during winter, then the other interests, such as photography is pushed forward.

Lately I have been exercising my trusty Fujifilm X-T2 a lot more. It really is a tremendous camera. My main gripe with it is actually that I really, really like the look of some of the later color film simulations that Fuji released. They have a very nice vintage look that I like. For black & white I have a film simulation dialed in exactly to my taste. But for color and the surroundings I live in, I have never really found one on the X-T2 that suits my taste.

Yesterday Fujifilm released the new X-T5 and luckily reversed back to make it more photography-focused instead of the hybrid focus on photography and video. I never shoot video, so the later versions of the X-T lineup never really spoke to me. I have a soft spot for the X-Pro3, but I am a little undecided about the size of it.

But once the local Fujifilm dealer receives the X-T5, then I will have to go and have a look at it and see how it feels in the hands.

I have also ordered a 7artisans 35mm F1.2 manual focus lens that I look forward to receiving. I have the 7artisans 35mm F0.95 but wanted a really small manual focus lens and after looking at a few ones settled for the F1.2. I really like the soft look of the 0.95 wide open and as far as I have read the 1.2 has some of the same. Time will tell.

Images

Enough talk. The series is called Roll of film not Roll of text. Here are some images I have taken during the last couple of weeks.

I was inspired by the look of Daido Moriyama. I like his results, but less inspired by the way he gets there. Nevertheless I liked the fact that a lot of his images were out of focus, shaky or in other ways “imperfect”. But still looked absolutely right.

So I went out and wanted to experiment with motion blur and other techniques for creating artful images.

The first one here is trying to enhance the effect of showing a rainstorm by using a slow shutter speed. It should then make it easier to see that the rain is pouring down and the trees are in motion in the background.

I think there is something to it, but I have by no means succeeded with this one.

This one is a very basic double exposure. It has something to it, but is by no means a success.

This is by no means artistic, creative or experimental in any way. But I still like it. It is simple while still telling a story about autumn weather.

Now this one is more experimental and has a glow to it that I really like. I experimented with a lot of different techniques and this technique did something for me. Especially with the next image.

This is the best one of the experimental ones to my eyes. I like the glow, I like the blurry look and the framing makes your eyes wander to the draw-bridge.

This one and the one after it are perfect examples of the magic that is the 7artisans 35mm 0.95 lens. I really, really love the soft glow it produces wide open. Some people will complain that it is not perfectly sharp wide open, but I absolutely love how it looks wide open. There is magic to it.

Just look at this last shot. A simple composition of my hammock, but the softness does everything to make this a beautiful image instead of just a representation of a piece of cloth that you can sleep in.

That was all for this time. I hope that I can find the motivation and time to do the next one in shorter succession. Until next time. Make more art.