Pushing film in Downtown Montreal.

I set myself a challenge to shoot only film for a week, no digital. Last evening I was setting out for a walk downtown with my buddy and realized that this would be a challenge.

I didn't want to use a flash so I decided to use a Kodak 400TX film and push it to 800 ISO. What you do is load with 400 ISO, set the camera to 800 ISO and add 20% more time when processing the film later on. These would be shot in the fashion of Daido Moriyama. I've been wanting to do this for some time after doing it with a digital camera and this was the perfect occasion.

I'm very happy with the result. 15 pictures from a roll of 24 came out to my liking. This was my first time shooting with this Ricoh 35ZF which I got for $5 at a thrift store. Not a bad buy.

Metro Cowboy

In his own universe

Waiting and texting

Place d'Armes Metro station

Chinatown walkers

St-Laurent and Ste-Catherine

Vacuuming after closing time on Ste-Catherine 

Being photographed, twice!

Young Ladies on a night out

McDonald's, "Can I take your order please?"

Shelter from the rain on Ste-Catherine

Walking by the photo exhibit

1970's photo exhibit of Montreal

Sex Shop on Ste-Catherine

Montreal PD on St-Laurent

Thanks for watching.

Gerry :)

The Daido Moriyama experiment

I came across Daido Moriyama on Youtube some time ago and couldn't believe how this guy came up with some great street photography shots. Mr Moriyama has a philosophy that the camera is nothing but a tool to capture an image, a moment in time.

He uses a simple 35mm point and shoot film camera with auto-focus. His technique is also particular where he hardly uses the viewfinder, he literately points and shoots!

I decided to give this technique a go but film being so precious I didn't want to waste any on an experiment that might turn out a bunch of crappy shots. Let's face it, I wasn't expecting to master in a day what a man has worked decades to perfect. So I went ahead and loaded up the old Nikon S8100 Coolpix with some fresh memory, juiced up the battery, set it to black and white, set up ISO and focus to auto. I even blanked the view screen since I couldn't turn it off and decided to not review my shots until I got home.

Out of 110 shots, I kept 70 and 30 are to my satisfaction. Most of the images were taken in the Montreal Metro since it was a very cold day outside. Hope you like how my experiment turned out. I will definitely be doing this again.

Gerry :)