Hi everyone, happy Tuesday! 👋

I hope everyone had a great weekend. I was finally able to finish my roll of Aurora 800 (more on that in a bit).

Here’s what we’ve got for today:

1. 🌧️ Shooting in the rain

2. 🎞️ Pushing Aurora

3. 🤑 Black Friday sales

4. 😻 Ben Zank’s work

🌧️ Shooting in the rain

Lately, I have been very conscious of the time of day and conditions when I go out and take photos. All too often it is harsh, mid-day, bright, sunny ☀️ light. While there is nothing wrong with shooting during this time and you certainly can get nice photos, it’s good to change it up.

This has led me to shooting closer to blue hour or doing long exposures at night. That has been fun, but last week I pushed it further. Taking photos:

• At night 🌃

• In the rain 🌧️

• At Times Square of all places📍 

Times Square is actually a pretty good place to take photos at night, as there are a lot of lights. Having everything wet can result in some interesting reflections. This is probably the best thing about shooting in the rain. All of a sudden the ground becomes a lot more interesting.

Water gets on the lens, making it will be misty or foggy, and things get a little blurry. Todd Hido would shoot in the rain a lot, usually through his car window. He described the water droplets in his photos as being like memories, reality is just a little distorted.

As hard as it can be forcing yourself to go out in the rain, I really want to do it more. Like shooting at night, it makes the same old scenery new again.

💡Some tips:

• Raincoat, no umbrella. I went out with an umbrella and it is too hard to try and hold it and take photos at the same time.

• Cover your camera. My camera definitely got wet, even with the umbrella. Next time I will use a camera cover. I have one for my digital camera that should work all the same.

• Look at the ground. Dry roads are boring. A reflection of a wet road is much more interesting.

🎞️ Pushing Aurora

Flic Film Aurora is an 800 ISO film, which is usually deemed suitable for low-light photography. However, for nighttime in the rain, 800 isn’t going to cut it. Even with Times Square lights. I really wanted to keep the shutter speeds at 1/125 or faster. Moving through crowds and holding an umbrella, I wasn’t exactly in a position to be rock solid.

So what can you do? Push the film of course. I pushed the film 2 stops. This means I set my camera’s ISO to be 3200 instead of 800. This gave me the shutter speeds I wanted.

To compensate for the underexposure, I kept the film in the developer for quite a bit longer—almost double the time.

Here were the results:

It worked pretty well. Heavy grain was my biggest concern; you’ll see more grain when you push film. However, it held up pretty well, the grain isn’t too crazy.

To finish out the roll and to take advantage of the higher shutter speeds, I was able to get a picture of my cats.

So just remember there are tools in your tool belt for dealing with any kind of lighting condition. It doesn’t have to be bright and sunny.

🤑 Black Friday sales

It’s Thanksgiving this Thursday, which means two things

1. Lots of turkey 🍗

2. Lots of sales 💰

I was hoping there would be some more Black Friday sales for us film photographers, but here are some sales that I found:

• Polaroid has some pretty good sales on their cameras.

• B&H has some discounts on film. Just keep an eye out on expiration dates. Some of the film they are discounting is either expired or close to expiring, so only get that if you plan on using it right away.

• Lomography has some deals.

• Retrospekt has 20% off on film.

If you find any other good deals, let me know! 🫡

😻 Ben Zank’s work

I came across a photographer the other day whose work I really like. Besides having a great name, Ben Zank’s self-portraits are just weird and funny. I believe he shoots digital now, but don’t hold that against him. His work is worth taking a look at.

That is going to do it for today. Have a wonderful holiday! We’ll see you next week.

Get out and turn a negative into a positive…even in the rain.

Ben Henschel

📷 Mamiya RB67 / 🎞️ Kodak Portra 400