202020 project

Hello very neglected blog! Happy New Year. This year, I have a lot of fun plans as my photography business grows. Hopefully I’ll get to at least half of those plans 😉 At the end of every busy fall season, I always find myself burnt out and in a bit of a creative rut. I’m always looking for something to do in the winter to spark my creativity and get me interested in picking up my camera again, just for fun.

That’s where the 202020 Project comes in. My photographer friend and studio mate, Heidi Peters, was gifted 400 rolls of film from a local high school. Knowing she would never (anytime soon) be able to shoot all 400 rolls, she came up with a great idea: to distribute the film amongst 20 photographers to shoot 20 rolls each and share 20 images over the course of 2020. Perfect timing for me! I literally just dusted off my Canon EOS-3 for this. It’s an old (I have no idea how old, but old…) 35mm camera that I use with all of my Canon lenses. I have thousands invested in digital gear, and I do really love all of my cameras. But this 2nd, or 3rd, or maybe 4th?-hand old Canon that I bought off of a photography forum on the internet about 10 years ago for 300 bucks holds a special place in my heart. I’ve taken some of my favorite images with it. I love shooting expired/random rolls of film with it. You never know what you’re going to get and it’s never anywhere near perfect and that’s the very best part.

As you can see below, I usually shoot color film stocks. The reason for that is that I am really drawn to the punchy + bold colors of film, and the way that film retains highlights so well. For this project though, we are all shooting the same type of black and white film. We have no idea how it was stored, or what kind of shape that it’s in, so results could be “interesting” and unpredictable. That just adds to the fun. There are photographers from coast to coast and many levels of experience doing this project, from high school age to more seasoned photographers who learned how to shoot film first back in the “olden days”. I fall more into the “olden days” category especially according to my children who are under the impression I am centuries old.

You can follow the project on the website HERE and on Instagram HERE. It’ll be a minute before any of us post anything since it takes much more time to produce these images, but I can’t wait to see the diversity of what we all capture. Hope you follow along on our adventures in analog photography. #filmisnotdead