Grainy Daze

Call it street photography, or pseudo-portraiture, ever since my incredibly talented photographer friend, Tigran, told me to arm myself with a 35 mm lens, and to take candid photos of people, I haven't looked back. When I first shot with my dslr, I really had no concept of how intricate a camera really was (& I'm still learning everyday). Minus the apertures, shutter speeds, and ISOs working elaborately together with delicate precision to recreate a brief moment, if not a blip, in time with perfect exposure, I genuinely had no idea what I was doing. f/3.5? auto-ISO? white balance?! 1/4000?!?! what the heck did all this mean?!?! As if that wasn't enough to digest. I'd simply set my camera to Program mode, point at something that looked appealing, half-press the shutter, wait a split second for the auto-focus to kick in, and then fire away. Even before the dslr, when I toyed around with a point and shoot, all I really thought about was how the photo looked in the rear screen, and didn't even bother to think about what the numbers meant. I can't say that I have a complete and thorough understanding of photography today, but I'm glad to have a little bit more knowledge in this field than a few years ago. Though shooting film has relegated all dslr terminology to the bottom bracket, I've got only six things to worry about: the framing, making sure my ISO is "correct", the f/stop, the shutter speed, the exposure, and the focus. I guess seven - if I include "how the photos come out" to the list. I still have a long way to go to be where I want to be, but I feel fortunate to have this experience that continually keeps me creative, passionate, and sane.

Anyways, a few weeks ago, Kelly, James, and I picked up a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 with the idea of taking pictures inside Live Club Ssam, where Llasa, a two-man-jammin-on-the-guitar-and-drums-band from Busan, were headlining. Before the show started, I popped in the 3200 at a lomography store in Hongdae where Kelly bought himself a new Holga to shoot with. Then, we went searching for the venue where Llasa would be playing later that night. We met up with Andrew, and went to a reggae bar playing the likes of Lee "Scratch" Perry, King Tubby, of course the Wailers, with Rockers shining out through the projector, & owned by a Japanese national (who is married to a Korean woman). After knocking down a few drinks, we made our way back to the show. Once again Llasa didn't fail to deliver. Everything got kinda hazy afterwards & the last few shots on this roll were taken the following morning.

This was the first time experimenting with film speed over 800 & to my surprise, it was really fascinating being able to shoot at speeds of 1/125 inside a dark-lit room at f/2. This film is the definition of grain. I'm not completely sold on the grain yet, and I would probably pick up some Tri-X, T-max, or Ilford 400's before reaching to the upper rack to pick up one of these. Well, without further adieu.

enjoi!

Roll:
1. Ilford Delta 3200

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


00: shot at m/250. 1: unknown ~ either 1/125 or 1/500?


she doesn't like getting her photo taken...










reggaebar where you can buy north korean beer!








Llasa






wait a minute...




cherry blossoms next...

... in color



pax