Building an adventure story one roll of film at a time
Shooting adventure and action and telling the story visually surely has been improved with digital system cameras – That's why I decided to shoot them using an analog camera, telling one story with one roll of film at time.
I have been shooting for year with digital cameras, and in these years I learned studying photography, reading everything about it, crafting and making mistakes. But in the end, nowadays with digital cameras it is quite simple to achieve a decent result: if not in camera, usually if one shoots RAW can most of the times make adjustments to the final picture.
I wanted to get myself in something more difficult, so I decided to buy myself an analog camera.
I found an old Canon Ft Ql on the internet for 20 bucks and a Canon Fd 28mm for the same price as the camera. I read online about the variety of films and got a Kodak Ektar 100 film without any particular reason.
Now I had it all, but I couldn't find the courage to just go out, point and shoot, that's just not my thing.
So one day something came to my mind: a personal project on what I love most, outdoor adventures and storytelling, with just one roll of film at time to tell a story, from start to end.
I usually work with brands and agencies on given assignments, whilst on magazine I usually pitch them with ideas. It is great, yet it is a job. It is in some manner personal, as I put in my pictures my style, which is an addendum between my story, my studies and my empathy towards the world, but it is, yet, a job with deadlines and guidelines to follow.
“Thinking about an authentic personal project without any anxiety, and given the minimalist method I was going to do it, was very, VERY, refreshing.”
Finally it came the day to start off the Analog Adventures project, and it happened to be on my birthday, on December 29th, 2019.
The goal was to set a new trad climbing line on our backyard crag, Mount Tifata, which is just 20 minutes away from home. So early that day I met with Diego, Luca and Adriano, my climbing friends, and started prepping the gear, and, obviously, the shooting.
I had with me also my Canon 5D Mark IV with which I measured light also for the analog camera. I was a bit anxious about the final result, but never thought up too much.
The day was just what every climber desires most in winter: sunny and warm.
Before we got our packs on our backs, Luca asked me “Are you sure this is how you want to spend your birthday?”
I answered with a big smile and said that I couldn't imagine a better way to spend it.
First on the trail to reach the pinnacle to climb, and then on the wall, attached on a rope, I had to choose carefully what to shoot and the settings of the camera, frame after frame, because I knew I had just 35 shots possible to tell the story visually from start to finish (the roll was 36 but I screwed one shooting all black).
Once we had the climb done, it was getting late and dark, but I stopped the guys from going down, as I had the very frame to shoot and told them “let's take a picture all together”.
In the fastest way possible I jumped on a rock with my bag as a tripod, set out the analog camera in the best way possible, turned the 10 seconds time lever, and jumped back to immortalize that moment.
It surely wasn't the hardest route ever climbed and neither the most beautiful, but surely one to remember for the good time and laughs spent with these guys.
Thanks to them, I finally jumped into the unknown, starting a not-sure-how-long personal project.
A week later I took the roll to develop to a person I got advised from a good friend of mine.
Once I told him how I shot the film, he told me that probably I had the film all over exposed. In that moment, I kinda felt stupid having shooted my first ever roll of film without first doing some test shots.
Some days after he called me telling me the film was developed. I had a huge sense of curiosity and fear that he could be right, so my first “Analog Adventure” roll, was just trash to throw away. When he told me that most of the pictures where exposed quite correctly, I was so happy that I just couldn't take any wait longer, so I ran home and digitalized with my dslr the films, too curious to look at the final result.
While processing them I decided that I would have left the black borders to every frame that I would not cut for any straightening or disturbing element. Not for a particular reason, but more to show myself that also with analog photography I can take quite straight images (lol).
In conclusion, this first roll of film shot in a difficult environment such as climbing walls, made me rethink the way I shoot digital: Usually with digital you are so caught up by the action that you start shooting in a kind of authomatic way, because in some contexts the action happens in just a second, then its gone, so the most important thing is to catch that, also if that means shooting 14 frames per second.
With analog photography, unless you have a thumb and index capable of shooting and charging film at the speed of light, you have to be actually more careful to what you decide to shoot, as that may result in a failed shot, which, with just 24-36 exposures possible, means a lot.
With digital photography it can happen that we just kind of shoot aimlessly at everything that catches our eye without even think to it, and maybe getting frustrated by the poor result we end up to have.
Analog just doesn't allow that.
Maybe that's why – having another purpose on going on adventures, first and foremost, and having a challenging photographic project - I ended up starting the Analog Adventures.
