Santa Monica shoreline and surf, photographed on Harman Phoenix II Switch Azure. Previously unpublished in the archive.
I used to think choosing a film stock was mostly about color and grain, but lately I’ve started to realize that it also changes the way I see the world in front of me. On a recent trip to Santa Monica, I had the opportunity to photograph the shore and pier with Harman Switch Azure. The beach was relatively flat with modest wave motion, but I wasn’t necessarily going there because I thought I would find something that had never been photographed before. Santa Monica is one of those places that has been photographed thousands, if not millions, of times. There are already countless photographs of the pier, the Ferris wheel, the shoreline, and the people who move through it every day. I think that was part of the reason I wanted to use Azure Switch in the first place. I wanted a medium that would allow me to photograph a very familiar place and reinterpret it in my own way.
Going into the roll, I knew some of what Azure Switch was supposed to do. I knew blue skies could become reddish-orange, and that reds could shift toward blue, but I wasn’t completely familiar with how every other color would react. I also wasn’t walking around Santa Monica constantly thinking about how every color in front of me would eventually be transformed. Most of the time, I was still photographing the same way I usually do. I was looking for things that I thought looked interesting, compositions that I resonated with, waves that were about to break in a particular way, or scenes that simply felt worth using one of my 36 frames on. Composition was much more at the front of my mind than trying to predict exactly how the film would reproduce the scene.
Visitors along the Santa Monica Pier promenade, with the Ferris wheel ahead. Harman Phoenix II Switch Azure. Previously unpublished in the archive.
That made receiving the scans even more rewarding. I honestly did not have extremely high expectations for the roll, but I ended up really loving it. The colors were much more interesting than I had imagined, and I found myself enjoying photographs that I do not think I would have cared about nearly as much if I had photographed the exact same scenes on a conventional color-negative stock. Some of the compositions themselves are not necessarily revolutionary. They are photographs of Santa Monica that, compositionally, probably resemble photographs other people have made before me. What made them exciting to me was seeing those familiar scenes re-envisioned through the film.
It also changed the way I approached editing. Normally, I try not to manipulate the colors of my photographs too heavily. If an image is leaning too cyan, yellow, or magenta, I might correct it, but for the most part I try to respect the way the film stock reproduced the scene. I usually spend more time working with exposure, contrast, and the overall tonal balance of the image. Azure Switch felt different. Once the sky was already orange and familiar colors had already been transformed into something abnormal, I felt like the boundary of what looked “correct” had already disappeared. I could push the saturation further, emphasize certain color relationships, and interpret the photograph more freely without feeling like I was fighting against reality. The stock had already changed reality for me.
My experience shooting Kodak Ektachrome E100 was almost the opposite.
A footbridge over the Venice Canals, seen through overhanging leaves. Kodak Ektachrome E100.
I first shot E100 around the Venice Canals. Unlike Azure Switch, where a lot of the experimentation revealed itself after I received the scans, Ektachrome made me much more deliberate before I ever pressed the shutter. I had heard repeatedly that slide film had very little exposure latitude compared with color-negative film, and that was constantly sitting in the back of my mind. I only had 36 frames; the film itself had been difficult for me to find, it was more expensive than something like Kodak Gold, and E-6 processing was more expensive as well. I really did not want to spend all of that time and money only to discover that I had ruined an entire roll. Because of that, I slowed down almost holistically.
I was paying much more attention to the brightness of my highlights and the darkness of my shadows. I used a light-metering app on my phone and tried to find a compromise that would preserve a reasonable amount of detail in both. But the deliberateness was not purely technical. I was also slowing down compositionally. I was paying more attention to shapes, reflections, color relationships, and whether a scene actually felt worthy of a frame.
Looking back at the Venice photographs, I think that slower process helped me notice photographs I could have easily walked past otherwise. A canal framed by leaves, an egret standing on an inflatable boat, or a palm tree reflected in the water were not necessarily photographs I had planned before arriving. They were photographs I noticed because I was moving through the space more carefully.
An egret on an inflatable boat in the Venice Canals, with an owl figure inside. Kodak Ektachrome E100. Previously unpublished in the archive.
Not everything worked, which ended up being equally important. I used a circular polarizing filter for several photographs around the canals because I wanted to reduce the glare coming off the water. When I eventually saw the results, many of those frames had a brown tint that I really did not like. I had originally planned on using the same CPL when I later took E100 to Duck Pass, but seeing what happened in Venice made me decide against it.
The Venice roll also taught me more about how E100 responds to light. I tend to prefer slightly overexposed photographs and usually feel comfortable correcting some of that exposure afterward when I am working with color-negative film. E100 gave me much less room to do that. I could still make adjustments, but I could immediately feel that I was working with less latitude. The photographs I liked most were generally the ones made while there was plenty of sunlight. Once the light began disappearing later in the day, especially as I moved toward the beach and Santa Monica, my exposures became much less consistent.
By the time I brought another roll of E100 on my Duck Pass backpacking trip, Venice had already changed how I planned to photograph with it. I did not use the polarizing filter. I paid much closer attention to my meter readings, taking readings from brighter and darker parts of the landscape and trying to find an exposure that could reasonably accommodate both. I also became more selective about when I even wanted E100 in my camera. I started the hike finishing a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus that I already had loaded from an earlier photo walk. I did not switch to Ektachrome immediately. I waited until we had gained more elevation and the landscape began opening into the kinds of scenes that I had imagined photographing on E100: gray mountains, deep green trees, blue-green lakes, and increasingly dramatic differences in light and color.
I could not always wait around for perfect lighting. We were backpacking, constantly moving, and stopping for too long meant cooling down and losing the momentum I had built while hiking. The landscape also already had an enormous amount of contrast. I could not simply avoid every difficult scene. Instead, I had to work within those limitations and decide which scenes deserved one of the relatively few E100 frames I had available.
I think that deliberateness changed more than just the photographs I was making. It changed the way I experienced the landscape. The hike was difficult. My backpack was heavy; it was cold and windy, and the elevation made parts of the climb physically exhausting. There were moments where I was seriously struggling. At the same time, though, I remember feeling incredibly immersed in the landscape around me. Because I was constantly looking at the light, the colors of the lakes, the placement of trees against mountains, the way one mountain overlapped another, or where something belonged within a frame, I was forced to actually pay attention to where I was.
Regardless of how difficult the hike felt physically, I was still stopping mentally to appreciate what was around me. In a strange way, being hesitant with E100 and treating every exposure as something valuable made me more aware of the place itself. The film was not just recording my experience of Duck Pass. The process of photographing with it was actively shaping that experience.
The funny thing is that I still do not know whether any of this actually worked. That roll of E100 is still undeveloped. Somewhere inside that canister are the photographs I spent the hike thinking so carefully about, and for now they exist only as latent images. I would obviously love to eventually develop the roll and find twenty or twenty-five photographs that I am genuinely proud of. I would be disappointed if only a handful worked. But I also think the experience has already taught me something regardless of what those transparencies eventually look like.
Venice Beach shoreline viewed from the pier, with swimmers scattered along the surf. Kodak Ektachrome E100. Previously unpublished in the archive.
Film stock can absolutely be an aesthetic choice. Azure Switch was an aesthetic choice because I wanted to transform Santa Monica into something different from the countless representations of it that already exist. E100 was an aesthetic choice because I wanted its color and transparency characteristics to become part of how I represented Venice and Duck Pass. But I no longer think the choice ends there.
The film in my camera changes what I notice. It changes how I meter. It changes how quickly I move through a place, which scenes I decide are worth photographing, how carefully I compose them, and even how I approach the photographs afterward.
Azure Switch gave me an enormous amount of freedom to ask how I wanted Santa Monica to look. Because the colors had already departed from reality, I felt comfortable pushing them even further and allowing my own interpretation to become part of the finished photograph.
Ektachrome asked something different from me. Instead of asking how far I could reinterpret the world, it made me think about how carefully I needed to observe it. I felt like I had to work with the film rather than simply make the film work for me.
I think that is what I am beginning to understand about film, place, and intention. The film stock is not simply something sitting inside the camera waiting to record whatever happens to be in front of it. It sits somewhere between me and the place I am photographing. Sometimes it gives me permission to transform that place. Other times it forces me to slow down and pay closer attention to it.
Either way, it changes the photograph before I ever see the negative.
