My First Post!

Welcome! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jason, and I've been a fan of photography nearly my entire life. Having taken several photography classes (do they even offer photography anymore in high school?) in high school in the late 80's to early 90's, and given the fact that I am heading into my mid 40's, I'd say that's pretty accurate. I've always been a visual person. I learn visually, and I am a visual artist and admirer of anything with visual stimulation. That's probably why I'm such a huge film geek, who even once had dreams of becoming a film director once upon a time. Hell, I even made a bunch of films with my friends when I was a teenager. So you can say I've always been into visual arts, whatever form that may be.

I would probably call myself a casual photographer. I will pick up a camera and suddenly gain some interest and play with it for a while, then move onto something else and forget all about it for years. That's pretty much what I've done my entire life with photography until recently when I really developed a deep passion for creating beautiful images with a camera. Digital of course. But even with my digital photography, I would always give it that "film" look. Most people would even ask if I had actually shot my images on film, and would be surprised to learn I hadn't, that it was all done post editing to make it look like I did. Which in itself is a compliment honestly.

When the pandemic happened, I was suddenly faced with the fact that I would not be able to collaborate with people for an undetermined amount of time, and as of this writing, it's been months with no end in sight. So I decided to take this free time to finally play with actual 35mm film. But I wanted to start slowly and not go full force crazy into it. It's so easy to go nuts with it and let's face it, film is not cheap. Sure you can get good film for a decent price, but when you factor in the cost of processing that film by sending it to a lab, and the shipping of that roll of film, well it adds up really quickly and in the end when it's all said and done, you're looking at spending roughly $20-$30 per roll. If you're lucky, you have a photo lab in your city, but the sad reality is that most of us do not, so we have to mail our film to any number of photo labs across the U.S.

Anyway, I'm blabbing. So the purpose of this blog is to not only document my journey as I learn, but maaaaaybe hopefully help someone else along the way. I've watched a ton of YouTube "how to shoot film" videos, but as I've recently learned while actually shooting film for the first time, there are lots of little things I've learned firsthand that have never been mentioned in any of those videos I watched. So thanks for stopping by and I hope you stick around.

Please follow my personal photography page on Instagram: @shot.by.jason
I may actually start another one strictly for my 35mm photos, but for now it's a mix of my digital and film. But it will show you how I've always been a huge lover of that film aesthetic. 

.jason