The Great Incredible Film Trade!

Somewhere in late July this year I discovered The Great Incredible Film Trade Group on flickr. You can check the link for the guidelines, but basically you find someone in the group who’s work you like, message them to see if they’re keen too, and swap exposed rolls. I think the idea is that you take photos with them in mind, though if you’re not keen on what the other person likes you wouldn’t ask them in the first place, so it’s likely that your likes and dislikes will be similar.

I was curious at first, though when I discovered that louisclub was a member of the group, it was an easy choice. I’ve long been a fan of his work, in particular his nature shots with shallow depth of field (DoF).

After a few flickrmails back and forward we agreed that we would each shoot a roll of 120 black and white as this would allow for home processing as well as not being too many shots to upload. I used a roll of Fuji Neopan 400 through a Rolleiflex 3.5. Louis used Arista.edu Ultra black and white in a Mamiya 645. He actually apologised for the film choice in a handwritten letter, making me seem quite crude in just sending a roll with no note!

Despite his concerns about the film not being particularly good, I really liked the results. When scanned it has a red base like the C41 process Ilford XP2, despite being a traditional process black and white film. It has really great contrast and seems to have quite a tolerable tonal range.

Anyway, on to the film right? It was quite exciting receiving it in the mail. When I got it developed (by a lab, I haven’t advanced to home developing 120 just yet) I felt quite privileged in that here was a roll of someone else’s film, and I was to be the first at seeing the results. The scanning was a similar process. It was slightly voyeuristic in that I was seeing the entire results of a whole roll, rather than the two or three that normally gets posted from a roll.

There were three that I absolutely loved. Two of these were in Louis’s classic shallow DoF style, while the third was a portrait - and this I fell in love with because of the intimacy Louis has managed to capture with his camera. It really feels like I’m looking in to his eyes, face to face rather than through a photo.

I’ve posted the three that I liked best here, but the rest can be found in the set I have created specifically for his photos. I really enjoyed participating in this group, so if you feel that we have similar interests photographically speaking, don’t be scared to flickrmail me with the suggestion that we should try it one time.

This is what I do for a crust.

We’re looking at new ways of marketing our product, which is based around wood fired pizzas.

One concept we came up with was the idea of a video that customers could look at to decide which pizza to order, knowing exactly from the outset how it was made and what the final product would look like.

This is a very basic version we threw together this afternoon and the final one will definitely be more polished, though we wanted to get some feedback first before continuing with the project.

Your thoughts and opinions are welcome.

Oh, and this is the "Supreme with optional olives and anchovies" made by Steve, the regular pizza chef.

I work part time in whatever section I’m needed, but I couldn’t resist the title

So I joined the JPEG community…

And you can vote for me here.

In case you came here from Your Photo Tips…

This blog is updated pretty sporadically. I tend to post mini posts on my individual flickr stream. I wouldn’t rule out any action on this blog, it just takes a backseat to my thesis writing and flickr posting…

Street shooting with a Pentax 6×7: Ghost Train.

Street shooting with a Pentax 6×7: Ghost Train.

Originally uploaded by the_wolf_brigade

And so one of my goals for 2008 is achieved…