The Economics of Film

U.S. 41A, Webster County, Kentucky

If you pay attention to such things, you may have noticed that all the photographs I've shown so far were shot on film. There's a reason for that: I photographed on film for the first 35 years of my career before making the transition to digital photography 16 years ago.

In my work as a documentary and commercial photographer, transparency (slide) film was always my preferred medium and was also usually required by my clients. I have shot many thousands of rolls. Fujichrome Professional 100D, is my all-time favorite film.

I've also processed thousands of rolls of slide film, using Kodak or Unicolor chemistry in a Unicolor Film Drum with a motor base and a home-made water bath with a fish-tank heater to keep the chemicals up to temp. (Although only the first developer is temperature-critical.) Later, we had a King Concepts processor in the studio, which made things a little more efficient.

When working, almost every situation was evaluated with a Minolta incident meter, and exposures were bracketed over a one and a half stop range in half-stops. Most of the time the half-stop under exposure was the selected one. I also used filters extensively, especially warming ones, to render as nearly as possible the feel of each scene on the film.

I was a very precise and careful photographer in those days, even in situations where I had to work quickly. There was no way to "fix it in post," so if I didn't get the scene on film the way I wanted it, too bad. Digital has made it easy to become sloppy.

Actually, photography was much more satisfying and fun when I shot film. But there are other considerations. For example:

For my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia (Countryman Press, 2017), I traveled more than 10,000 miles around the state over the course of a year and made more than 4,200 digital exposures, which equates to about 118 rolls of film.

Since my cameras and lenses were already paid for, those 4,200 exposures essentially cost me nothing. If I had been using slide film (Provia, from B&H at $10 per roll), those exposures would have cost me $1,180. A gallon of E6 chemistry from Arista costs $80 and can process about 40 rolls. That's around $240 for processing. Not cheap, but much cheaper than a lab.

So if I had processed the film myself, which I could easily have done, total cost for film and processing would have been about $1400. Probably a good bit more than that, actually, because if I had been shooting film I would have bracketed, which is not usually necessary when shooting digitally in RAW mode.

I received a reasonably generous advance from the publisher, but that also had to cover gas, lodging, and food. Adding in film and processing costs would have stretched it a little too far.

And of course, there's also the time cost. Processing all that film takes time. Fortunately, I can edit slides on the light box, which is certainly as fast as editing on computer, but then there's also scanning time. Lots of scanning time. About 225 photos were used in the book, but I had to submit more than that to give the editor some choices. It all adds up.

But do I think the book would have been better if I had shot it on film? Yeah, I really do. With film, I could have used filters to render the ambiance, the feel of the light in a scene much more effectively than I have been able to do with digital photography. Maybe there's a way to do that, but I haven't figured it out yet.

So, could the book have been better? I think so, but I might be the only one to notice.

(Canon EOS A2, 28-105 f3.5-4.5 Canon EF lens, Fujichrome 100. Cokin #85 filter to capture the feel of the early light.)

The Assignment of a Lifetime: Part II

Horse Laugh, U.S. Hwy. 11, McMinn County, Tennessee

(Continued)

Sorting Rock City's old file cards by states and within states by highways, I planned an itinerary for my first trip and began photographing at Sweetwater, Tennessee on October 24, 1994.  Over the next 18 months, stealing time whenever my studio schedule allowed, the trail of barns led my old Chevy Blazer nearly 35,000 miles to more than 500 sites in 15 Southeastern and Midwestern states.  Nearly 250 barns were found in 14 states, with only Michigan proving barren.

With 35-year-old, often sketchy records and occasional hearsay reports as my only sources of information, finding the sites was an endlessly fascinating piece of detective work.  Barns have burned, blown down, been bulldozed for highway construction and subdivisions, or simply fallen from disuse and disrepair.  Many of the largest and finest are gone. To complicate things still further, highways have been changed, re-routed, and re-named.

Often, the only way to locate a site was to find someone who remembered the property owner:

"Do you remember so-and-so, who had a place out on Highway 11 south of here?"

"Oh, yeah, knew him well.  He and my daddy used to go fishin' together all the time.  Good ol' feller.  He's dead now."

"Well, he had this barn on his farm, with a sign that said 'See Rock City.'  Here's an old picture of it."

"Sure, I remember that ol' barn.  Fact is, I helped him take it down, back around 1975.  It had got all rotten and falling down, y'know.  Weren't safe."

I also learned to take the information I was given with a grain of salt.  The people most familiar with an area are often the least observant.  In Robbinsville, North Carolina I asked a gas station attendant about a barn.  "Oh, sure," he said, "It was just down the road here, about a half mile.  But it's been torn down."  Checking for myself, I found his directions to the site were perfect.  But not only was the barn still standing, it had just been repainted and was one of the rare barns with "See Rock City" signs on both sides!

In those pre-digital days, of course, everything was photographed on film, mostly Fujichrome 100. I began the project with a pair of Canon EOS-10S bodies and one EOS-RT and gradually upgraded my equipment so that by the time I finished I was working with two Canon A2s and a 10S.  Lenses carried were the 70-210mm f4, the 28-105mm f3.5-4.5, the 50mm f1.8, the 35mm f2, and the 24mm f2.8, all Canon EF.  Probably 90% of the photographs were made with the 24 and the 28-105.  Exposures were almost always read with a Minolta Flashmeter III in incident mode. Color filters were used frequently to render scenes the way I felt them.

Each barn was also photographed in black and white. (Pre-digital days, remember?)

An average day of photography might involve driving more than 450 miles in 12 to 15 hours, and result in locating eight or ten sites, of which three to five might have barns.  Some days were better than that, of course, and some were much worse.  I spent a total of about 75 days on the assignment, capturing images in winter snow, summer haze, the soft light of spring and the clear light of autumn. Working the sweet early and late light in midsummer meant 18-hour days and not much sleep.

I began the project with some idealism, I suppose. Expecting to find prosperous, story-book farmyards, I often found depressing scenes of rural desolation.  Most of the barns were far from any farmhouse.  Many were dilapidated, some were overgrown with brush.  I learned to take whatever each situation gave me and tried to use that to make a photograph which expressed the spirit of the place

What began as the assignment of a lifetime grew into a labor of love as I came to treasure the dignity and individuality of each old barn.  I learned to see beauty even in the isolation in which so many of them are ending their days.  I learned that they wanted to be photographed in a direct, documentary way, without artifice.  They seemed to say, "Here we are.  This is the way we are.  Please let us speak for ourselves."

(Canon EOS 10S. 24mm f2.8 Canon EF lens. Fujichrome 100 film.)

The Assignment of a Lifetime

U.S. 165, Morehouse Parrish, Louisiana

In Indiana, a black cat wound itself around the legs of an old farmer and looked up at me, eyes gleaming in the early light.  In Louisiana, a yellow locomotive emerged from behind a barn just at the right time, under just the right kind of sky.  In Tennessee, a pony positioned himself in front of a barn, threw back his head, and gave me the horse laugh.  Serendipity, which by definition is capricious and unpredictable, became a welcome and almost expected companion as time and again I traveled all day under overcast skies which opened to bathe a barn in rays as I arrived, then closed again.  It was my dream project, the assignment of a lifetime.  And it began with three little words: "Let's do it!"

The man who spoke them was Bill Chapin, president of Rock City Gardens, a tourist attraction near Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Behind the words, a lifetime dream: to create a book about the old barns whose painted message, "See Rock City" became one of the greatest outdoor advertising campaigns of all time.  They launched me on a project that was to occupy much of my time and effort for the next three years and affect my life and business profoundly. 

It began with Bill's great-uncle, entrepreneur Garnet Carter, who laid out trails and swinging bridges through ten acres of massive rock formations on the cliffs of Lookout Mountain overlooking Chattanooga.  Hoping to regain his depression-lost fortune, he opened Rock City Gardens to the public in 1932, but unfortunately nobody much came.  Not until 1936 did things improve, when he hired an enterprising young sign painter named Clark Byers to travel the length and breadth of the land painting "See Rock City" on the roof or side of every barn whose owner would allow it.  So diligent and successful was he that as many as 900 barns in 19 states may have carried the Rock City slogan over the years, making it famous around the globe. 

 

The retirement of Byers in 1968, coupled with changing highway sign laws and the completion of the Interstate system brought about a drastic reduction in the barn painting program, as Rock City began to rely on other forms of advertising -- which ultimately brought me into the picture.  As a commercial photographer with a studio in Chattanooga, I began working for the attraction in the early '80s, photographing for brochures and other advertising.  In 1988, Bill told me of his long-held dream of a book about Rock City's barns and asked me to find out what it would cost.

Although he decided not to proceed at that time, my interest was kindled.  I obtained a list of the 110 barns they were still maintaining, and whenever my travels brought me near one I made a photograph of it if possible.  In 1994, after learning that the barns being maintained by Rock City had dwindled to 85, I went back to Chapin with my photos and told him that if he wanted to do a book, this was the time.

He didn't say much.  Just looked at the pictures for about 15 minutes, asked a few questions, then said the magic words: "Let's do it!"

       

A few days later I received a box containing hundreds of old file cards, the only record of most barn locations.  On each card was the name of the last known property owner, the highway route number, and the distance from the nearest town.  Many had a small photo attached, apparently taken about 1960; but some had only rough sketches of the barns.  Inside each card was a record of rents paid (usually $3 to $5 per year) and repaint dates.  Rock City had had no contact with most of the barns since the late '60s.  The only way to find out if they were still standing was to go and see. 

 

So I went.

(Canon EOS-A2, 28-105 f3.5-4.5 Canon EF lens, Fujichrome 100 film.)

He's back. . .!

Demented Spider, Walker County, GA

Who starts a blog, posts six days in a row, then disappears for eight years?

Umm. . .that would be me.

I began this blog in a burst of enthusiasm, kindled by the fact that I had just finished a major book project. But, it soon fell prey to my lack of personal discipline, coupled with the fact that it took more time than I really wanted to commit at that time. So, I'm back. At least for now, and I hope I can find the discipline to continue, because I do have some things I want to say.

It would have been less embarrassing to just start a new blog from scratch and not have to go through the mea culpa bit, but I like the name of this blog, and I like the things I've written, even though that was eight years ago. So here I am.

So, what have I been doing? Photographing, of course, because that's what I do. Still doing some commercial work, although not as much as I used to. But then, I don't pursue it like I used to. Also, I photographed and wrote another book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, published by Countryman Press of New York in 2017. More about that in future posts.

So what brings me back? Well, I've wanted to come back for a long time, but was finally inspired to give it another try by a post titled You Should Start a Blog on Jim Grey's blog Down the Road (https://blog.jimgrey.net/ 

I hope to keep things going by posting two or three times a week, and I hope you'll enjoy it enough to come along for the ride.

(Canon EOS A2, 24-85 f3.5-4.5 Canon EF lens, Fujichrome 100 film.)