#i wanted to fully render this but. i lost all ability to blend.

[lord-of-the-lies]

Virge my beloved <3

click for better quality

rbs > likes

[solitvdcs]

* kathryn newton, cis female + she/her | you know zoey simon-archer, right? they’re twenty-three, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, eight years? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to a little wicked by valerie broussard like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole black clothes and black coffee, dark under eye circles barely covered with concealer, might put a hex on you thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is august 10, so they’re a leo, which is unsurprising, all things considered.

TRIGGER WARNING: CHILD ABANDONMENT

basic info

full name: zoey tallulah simon-archer

birth date: august 10, 1997

pronouns: she/her

hometown: boston, massachusetts

sexuality: bisexual

height: 5’1”

eye color: blue

hair color: blonde

build: slim

tattoos: one of her younger siblings doodled on her arm and she said ok i see u and made it permanent

piercings: basically every piercing you can get on your ears split between both (no piercing is in the same spot except maybe the earlobes, she thrives on the chaos), septum

style: if it’s black and shapeless then yes

favorite color: black

favorite food: whatever she can find in the house while scavenging at 3am

zodiac: leo sun, scorpio moon, capricorn rising

mbti: istp

hogwarts house: ravenclaw

enneagram: type 4 wing 5

temperament: choleric/sanguine

alignment: chaotic neutral

bio bullet points

CHILD ABANDONEMENT TW it’s unclear how zoey came into this world, but what we do know is that she was dropped off on the doorstep of a fire station before her birth mom disappeared into the night. no note, no keepsakes, just two week old zoey wrapped in a nondescript blanket that was probably the one the hospital wrapped her in. the rest of her childhood was a blur of failed adoptions and shitty foster homes across the country (east coast especially), leaving her with no ability to fully connect with anyone and, okay, maybe a mild anger problem. rage blackouts weren’t uncommon, but in one foster home they had an old nintendo 64 and she learned to channel her anger through video games instead END TW

along came the archers, a lesbian couple that already had twelve other children. zoey was fifteen already and had fully expected to age out of the system and end up another statistic. for a good year after the adoption was finalized, zoey still didn’t trust that they wouldn’t send her back, so she acted out. she wanted to give them an excuse and get it over with, but her tactics went unnoticed in a cheaper by the dozen-esque household. her new moms couldn’t give her the attention she craved with so many bodies, but her older siblings stepped up and tried to make her comfortable. it sort of worked, but being smack dab in the middle of so many kids meant she faded into the background more often than not

at school, she thrived without trying, a natural aptitude for math and science and mechanics landing her a place on the robotics team, but because her many siblings had already made names for themselves, the archer name was almost like a curse for her. she didn’t want to be known as another archer adoptee, so she went by the name she’d carried with her from birth: simon. zoey simon could be her own person, whoever the fuck that was

one day, the robotics coach brought in their old computer for anyone who wanted to tinker around with it, and wanting an excuse to stay out as long as possible, zoey jumped on the opportunity. over the course of the semester (with the coach’s guidance) she took apart and put it back together again, upgrading it with some donated parts from a local electronics store. the best part? coach let her keep the computer after she was done

obligatory at some point she cheated on frankie with both sutter and ziggy ✌️😗

anyway we’re onto college, where she got hella scholarships and grants for being a girlboss and ended up at university of michigan, studying mechanical engineering. money was still tight, though, so she spent her first year trying to balance studies and a part time job at the local superstore, but her mental health and grades started suffering to the point that she almost lost her scholarships for her second semester. Between semesters, over a night of video games with her roommate, she offhandedly suggested zoey start live streaming her playthroughs. it may not make all that much, but a few viewers and subs would be better than nothing

but oh boy did she do better than a few viewers and subs

using a digital rendering of a random avatar and a voice modulator, psychozomatic was born, and they blew up. popular streamers started inviting her to their servers, and she made enough to cover all of her extra costs and then some — she graduated summa cum laude because of streaming, but she couldn’t stop after graduation; she was doing something she loved and getting paid for it. that’s what people always hoped for in a job, right? so after graduation, she fabricated a job to her friends and family to explain the income, moved into her own apartment with a soundproofed second bedroom (that she kept under lock and key for whenever anyone came over) and kept up the facade. it’s been five years and nobody even knows she’s a girl — female streamers get so much shit, she’s not sure she ever wants to do a face reveal. she’s perfectly content for the time being having everyone think “zo” stands for “lorenzo” or “vincenzo” or whatever, and being a faceless streamer means she gets the weird blend of notoriety and anonymity that she craved her whole life

personality wise, zoey is a mash-up of deadpan humor and snark. she’s never been good at face-to-face communication, which is why streaming works so well for her. she’s never known how to flirt and has been known to tie someone’s shoelaces together in an attempt to get their attention, which has obviously not worked out for her. once showed a person she thought was cute the computer she built and well...they were impressed but nothing came out of it. she’s probably a lost cause, but she can just play a dating simulator if she’s that lonely

is big on first person shooter games — the main reason she keeps her identity hidden, because people get nasty in those lobbies. also absolutely loves horror games, currently doing a playthrough of resident evil village on her stream

wanted connections

fans of her stream !!! obviously they wouldn’t know it’s her but it’ll still give her a lil smile and maybe even a blush if she hears someone talking about “zo”

other gamers she’s played with ???

people she met in the foster system

someone who has a crush on her and she has no idea bc she can’t read people (and vice versa)

friends of her siblings that had no idea she was one of them (i’m mean to her bt i think it wld be funny)

i’ve been working on this intro for like a week this is all i got pls take it and run <3

[haikyuu-scenarios-box]

Haikyuu Horrors — Week 2🔪

Demon — DemonKing!Oikawa Tooru x FallenAngel!Reader

Previous Week: Wendigo — Kuroo Tetsurou x GenderNeutral!Reader 

TW: fire, mentions of torture, religious references, blasphemy i mean seriously demon!oikawa is in love with u ofc it’s gonna be blasphemous

Word count: 2,370

UNDER THE CUT

__________

One of the many debates in Heaven was why the number of demon contracts skyrocketed as centuries passed. As [y/n] poured the hot tea from the pot into their cup, they recalled their answer - mortals were simply hollow without greed. Koushi’s healing wasn’t enough, Azumane’s protection wasn’t enough, Kiyoko’s beauty wasn’t enough and Daichi’s wisdom wasn’t enough.

But the demons... their services fully relieved whatever emotional or superficial famine mortals were undergoing. They went beyond what a mortal desired and for that, they gained their soul in exchange for temporary pleasures. [Y/n] figured that Tooru - the king that oversaw the sixth circle of Hell - was relishing in the torture he subjected those that were damned to reside in his realm for entirety. 

The tea coated [y/n]’s mildly inflamed throat with a comforting warmth. When they caught a glimpse of the woods from the front window, a bitterness akin to a melting pill on their tongue bloomed within their chest. Keiji just dropped them in the middle of nowhere and by sheer chance, [y/n] eventually found a one-room cabin that’d been abandoned for years. It had barely been a month and [y/n] was already inflated with frustration. How the fuck did mortals live like this? They felt like a goddamn farmer every time they watered the empty vegetable patch and collected leaves from a nearby tea shrub.

Their jumbled thoughts ceased once their ears began picked up on distant sprinting. [Y/n] would be lying if they said that their paranoia didn’t exponentially increase the moment they fell. After all, most of their powers had been taken, besides a small bit of their healing ability and heightened senses. No strength. No agility. No exorcism. Nothing.

At first, [y/n] dismissed the sounds as paranoia - a camper or hiker, perhaps? Despite their attempt at composing a logical justification, a bout of nausea grew within their gut and the muscles along their jaw ached with tension. The sweat that slowly sweeped from [y/n]’s pores pricked their skin as they hurriedly reached for the door, locking the four locks along it.

It couldn’t have been a human. Those sprinting footsteps were far too fast. 

It couldn’t have been an angel. They were forbidden from contacting all of them, including fallen ones.

It could only belong to a demon that donned a human body.

[Y/n]’s hands shivered with a numbing, glacial dampness. They no longer possessed defensive abilities, nor were there any weapons in the cabin that would be effective against a demon. As the sprinting got louder within their ears, a dry knot formed itself within their throat and the intensity of [y/n]’s heartbeat weighed their head down, almost sending them to the floor. They were simply frozen. There was nothing that could be done.

A great force shattered the wooden door into splinters and boards. The locks might as well had been a layer of chiffon. 

‘W-what...’ they backed away slowly, the sharpness of a spike buried within their sternum. He appeared human, but [y/n] could very clearly see his real form. ‘How... Azumane s-sealed you away, I-I don’t...’

‘I didn’t think that this form would leave you speechless,’ Tooru said with pride, flashing a charming smile, ‘I wanted to wear something nice for you.’

‘Wear something?’ [y/n] repeated with disgust, ‘You’ve possessed an innocent man!’ they yelled, riddled with spite, ‘Who is he? A father? A son? A—’

‘I’m offended that you’d accuse me of such a thing,’ Tooru feigned hurt as he approached them, ‘I made all of this’⁠—he gestured in a downwards motion to his body as he grinned—‘on my own. It took a decent amount of energy to make a form this appealing. You could at least appreciate it.’ 

‘Well that energy has gone to waste because I can already see how hideous you look underneath it,’ [y/n] scowled, ‘get out or I’ll send you back to where you belong,’ they bluffed, stretching out their right hand towards him. They wished that the archangels could hear them curse for taking away the only ability that would’ve kept them safe. 

The smirk that Tooru’s lips curled into denoted scepticism and cockiness. The last time a substantial number angels fell was eras ago when they fought alongside the Devil (which, as most knew, ended with a victory for Archangel Azumane when he managed to seal him away within the deepest layer of Hell). Despite that, Tooru didn’t forget that those angels that fell to Earth had almost entirely lost their powers.

‘Come closer and do so then,’ he beckoned, ‘or are you scared that I’ll be the one who sends you to where you should’ve fell?’

[Y/n] opened their mouth to respond, but Tooru’s strides towards them caused that sentence ceased before it even began. In the three centuries they’d been imprisoned in Tartarus, they’d almost forgotten how ugly and twisted a demon’s real form was, even more so when it was the king of a circle. It was such a sharp contrast to the human face that Tooru currently hid behind; a smokey, pitch-black void that dripped with a various shades of a deep crimson. The blurry features of a substantial number of agonised human faces littered his form, their hands either pounding or scratching. He had the skull of a horse for what would be a face and his limbs were thrice as long as that of a normal human; the decaying shreds of muscle sizzling around the cobalt traces of fire lining them. 

At the same time, though, [y/n] couldn’t deny that Tooru’s mortal form was captivating. It was mesmerising enough to render them blind to what lied beneath it. 

‘As if dumping you in the middle of rural Japan like a bag of trash wasn’t bad enough, your powers were taken away as well,’ Tooru stared right into them, ‘a bit excessive for throwing a tantrum about serving ungrateful humans, don’t you think?’ 

Long ago, prior to when [y/n] began to develop an intense loathing towards the archangels, they would’ve sent the bastard right back to Hell so that he’d go back to trapping every damned human within a flaming tomb, or whatever other punishment that the sadist came up with throughout his reign. 

Certain affirmations simply could not be forced, and this was one of them. In a way, [y/n] was starved - they always sought more control, more freedom and much more power. Tooru stole the words right out of their larynx. If Father had truly loved them equally, he would have granted every angel unimaginable power. Equality and bias were opposites and restricting such power to the Archangels was on the far end of that spectrum. The fact that all [y/n] could do was do mortals’ bidding filled them with resentment, so much to the point where they were surprised that none of the other angels sensed it. 

‘I can still feel it so clearly,’ Tooru inhaled deeply with a pleased smile, ‘that pure hatred in you,’ he said, ‘I remember it all the way back from when you fought alongside Azumane when he was trying to seal me away. You were the only being that abandoned the battle,’ his features softened, ‘and for that, you were damned.’ 

[Y/n]’s eyes and nostrils grew warm, lower lip quivering. ‘How did you break the seal?’ they muttered after a short silence, changing the topic and neglecting his earlier statement. 

‘I’m glad you asked!’ Tooru clasped his hands together, ‘All it takes is fire created by an archangel.’ 

‘W-when I fell...’ [y/n]’s heart pounded within their cranium upon realisation, ‘... the embers from Keiji’s fire...’ 

‘Correct,’ he beamed, ‘That reminds me, I should probably thank Makki and Mattsun for taking their hellhounds on regular walks. Those hounds smelled messenger boy’s fire from towns away.’ 

They merely stood there, watching Tooru walk around the cabin curiously. The entire encounter caused an harsh headache to throb along their temples. [Y/n] could sense their eyeballs slowly rolling to the back of their skull and they wanted nothing more than to lay down. 

‘This place is depressing. And I’m saying that as someone who lives in Hell,’ he remarked, his back facing them as he glanced at the patches of dust on the kitchen counter. 

‘Did you come here take me to your realm or to judge my decor?’ [y/n] sarcastically asked, overwhelmed with emotions they couldn’t even describe (divine beings were crafted to be pragmatic, not emotional). ‘If you’re planning on torturing me for intel on the archangels, let me just tell you in advance that they’re still sitting up there doing nothing.’ 

‘Torture?’ Tooru chuckled. When he turned around, [y/n] watched ebony slowly pool into his eyes, starting from his waterline and eventually blending into his pupils. The smirk he wore only amplified his unsettling aura. ‘If that was my plan, I would’ve just asked the kings of the eight circle to take care of you. Tetsurou, Bokuto and Kei would have got you talking in no time.’

The mention of those names drove a shudder to travel through every bone in [y/n]’s body. A sudden heat enveloped them, leading sweat to become a disgusting adhesive between their clothes and skin. The wooden walls snapped and crackled, whereas their lungs felt as though they were on the verge of collapsing into themselves. When their vision grew distorted with heat stronger than that of Tartarus’, [y/n] realised that it was far too late to keep stalling.

‘What I want is to propose an offer.’

With a single blink, cobalt flames erupted from the floor in the form of a dome around them. The intense heat against their skin was excruciating enough to make [y/n] howl and whimper, a first degree burn already flourishing onto their skin. The smoke compressed and stung every one of their internal organs; despite that, they refused to sink to their knees. 

‘God’s love isn’t unconditional, [y/n],’ Tooru began, walking through the wall of fire without a flinch, ‘he made me too, yet he doesn’t love me. And he certainly doesn’t love you either. Not anymore.’ 

Several wooden planks clattered to the dusty floorboard from the ceiling, a thick blackened sheen enveloping them almost immediately. [Y/n] could barely breathe, their gasps and wheezes sharp enough to bear a similarity to skewers impaling them. Yet, terror was no longer within them; merely because they were in the presence of someone who understood. As Tooru cupped [y/n]’s face and stroked their cheekbones with his thumb, the flames began to slowly dwindle into ash.

‘But me? I love you.’

‘What?’ [y/n] questioned, confused beyond measure. Demons were incapable of love - this was either lust or pure manipulation. 

‘I love you,’ Tooru repeated, an unnerving Cheshire grin drawn along his lips. ‘Without you, your rebelliousness, your disobedience, your hatred, I never would have been able to return here,’ he slightly tightened his grip on their face, ensuring that their gaze remained fixated on him, ‘Fallen angels gain great power when they’ve suffered in Hell long enough. Much greater than your father could ever give you. Return with me and suffer, and then... it’ll be yours.’ 

His fingers ran through [y/n]’s hair, brushing away stray strands off their forehead. The gesture was so tender, so human; a complete contradiction to his nature and position. They weren’t sure that angels themselves were capable of carrying out an act that delicate. 

‘I want more than that,’ [y/n] scowled, placing their hands flat against his chest. ‘I want the archangels to suffer. I want every human in Hell. I want the entire fucking earth,’ they curled their fingers into Tooru’s shirt, aggressively pulling him towards them to press their lips against his. They were infuriated by their own thoughts and transfixed by the demon in front of them; it was as though [y/n] believed acting on their blind instincts would somehow enrage the archangels. Their lids slowly sunk closed as he placed one hand at the back of their neck and the other on their lower back, tugging them even closer to his body.

‘There’s only one way to gain that kind of power,’ Tooru smirked as he pulled away, raising their head by the chin with his knuckle to stare right into their irises.

‘I know,’ [y/n] solemnly said, gently stroking his cheeks, ‘Take us home.’

__________

It would have been logical for one to assume that Hell would be even more unbearable for a being that resided in Heaven for centuries, but [y/n] was an anomaly. They stood in front of the full-length mirror, admiring their formal attire and mortal form. A while ago, Tooru had refurbished the castle entirely while [y/n] underwent the transformation. Although it’d been eras since an angel was turned into a demon, he recalled how lengthy and agonising the process was and of course, he wanted his darling to return to a home they’d adore prior to even entering.

‘Your highness,’ a voice rang from behind them, ‘we await your arrival.’ 

It wasn’t just Tooru and [y/n] that donned their mortal form today. They’d made everyone in the realm do so as well. Demons accepted their appearance, yes, but no one could deny that they were repulsive (after all, [y/n] themselves couldn’t persuade their mind to view their new self as acceptable). Neither of them wanted to stare down at their subjects in their monstrous forms from the castle’s balcony. 

When [y/n] headed towards the balcony, their groom finally came within their sight. ‘My love,’ they cooed, prompting Tooru to turn around. Hajime, his personal advisor, was already delivering a speech about the significance of the day; though [y/n] wasn’t listening, really. 

Tooru took their hands within his, kissing their knuckles with a genuine grin. 

‘The overseer of the City of Dis’—Hajime began his introduction—‘the punisher of heresy, the ruler of the sixth circle of Hell, King Tooru!’ 

Excited yells, hollers and claps erupted as Tooru left their side to appear on the balcony. He stood proudly with a captivating smile, giving a wave to the demons he ruled over. Almost everyone in the realm attended - a “short vacation”, they all called it.

‘And the angel that abandoned the battle against the sixth circle now roams it, not as a fallen angel, but as one of us!’ Hajime announced with a loud, confident voice That was [y/n]’s cue to appear.

‘King Tooru’s [bride/groom], [y/n]!’ 

The buoyant cheers grew once more as [y/n] stopped beside Tooru; yet the attendees might as well have remained completely silent, for all their focus was on him. He wrapped his arms around [y/n]’s waist as they cupped the sides of his face, tenderly placing his lips against theirs and relishing in their warmth and softness. They both currently appeared so humane; however, they knew that they shared an intense ugliness within them. 

‘We will soon dominate the Earth and the Heavens, darling,’ Tooru whispered. 

They wouldn’t have had it any other way.

[val-lanto]

Lanto Talks: #2 Frustrations, Minimalism and Backlogs (And another PSD)

A mixed bag of thoughts to shift through this time around. Won a challenge, didn’t place in the other for two pieces that I consider on the other sides of the spectrum of each other. We’ll cover that and my thoughts technically between two pieces themed around the same thing. And my eternal frustration when dealing with minimalism.  

I’m not really good at being a humble winner nor a humble loser, so when I say I’m both bitter and surprised at the contest results, I do mean it. The two pieces in question are two Cioccolata pieces: MON WED FRI that documents just after his death and The Pinnacle Of Curiosity that focuses on Cioccolata’s background and story. Both based on panels, both expanding out, both relatively the same. Both filled with little details: Cioccolata’s earring appears in both; The flip phone to Secco appears in both; and both pieces have a hidden message in you’ll only see if you really zoom in or watch the speed art. Little details are my favourite thing to put in, all the little hidden things and Easter eggs. So, you’ll forgive me when the results of the competition had flipped the opposite way I had expected. The earlier piece, I believe is the best I’ve one in my newer art, and probably one of my favourites of all time. Enflamed by malice about something, I struck my heart and passion into painting every little detail. The level of touching up and painting to do within the piece was rather extreme. Blending the trash textures, making sure to take small bits of paper fold over each other. There was delicate attention to the detail like the licks of flames and under blurring for the layers of rubbish. The details and time it takes to layer flat textures with depth is something I never want do ever again. In turn, the other piece the number of corners I cut in the piece I won with was immense. A rushed piece sketched out just before the deadline to a friend over discord. The arm in the background is incorrect, the shadowing is wrong on the coat and the perspective on the able is laughable. The reflection on table is actually wrong too, the arm on both the tablet and the background mirror were done at different parts therefore inconsistent. upon retrospect, even the depth is lazy.  It doesn’t have the finishing touches, those extra brushes that separate the former piece out. Then that moves me to a different angle, the difference between concept and technical ability.

There is always the “defence of concept”. It’s something I am always in two minds about. Every contest has a theme and thematic the judges are looking for. To do something as precise as that, even with the speed art makes it harder to notice or see.  Further on, while I miss disagree with the winner of both contests, More so the former, there is always the different n concept. For a theme like “The More You See” there’s going to be a much more heavier weight on the concept. When I first stated signature making about 6 to 7 odd years ago now at Platinum Graphics, I used to be much more vehemently involved on this discussion and all in for concept over tech. Going against the nature of fifty same looking c4d and render sigs in favour of creative ones. The admin himself who I won in a battle to prove my voice about creativity over technical ability would always disagree with me.  Coming full circle now, I seem too much to be on the other hand, vying for my technical ability and a balance rather than two pieces of stock blended with an essay. If we go way back there was a time where I thought many of my pieces that were boring, same and unmoving from the crowd, they are all technically competent at the least. Several dozen girls in long dresses doing things with nature, blah blah. Everywhere all I saw the same angels, vampires and fairies, I made explicit pieces in a fairy competition of a piece “killing” theories.  There is a balance though between concept and technical ability. I made a series of manips taking a stab at the constant same 3 or 4 things I saw maniped. The “Jimmie series” of these four pieces, where taking the “boring” concepts like mermaids and that fisherman statue, but done under the story of a long hair wearing tentacle monster. They are technically, visually good with and interesting concept to marry with a story. I think this is where I peaked between balancing concept vs the technical side.  I think where that balance lines comes back to where you personally sit on the sliding scale of personal taste.

That brings us to my two recent minimalism pieces for the Stewed Tomatoes contests I tried to test this a little but making two pieces I think were on the other side of the scale. One more technically profound, clean and playing with depth to create a jarring minimal piece but has no meaning and was strictly made with anything that could lead to a concept. It’s nonsense. The second piece, not so technically profound and filled with broken clip, incorrect perspective. Yet it’s endeared with a concept at every point. The blue and red. The black and white. The cross and the purposeful little description added onto it. All this is filled together to make a piece with a story deep with hidden meaning, symbolism but not as technically profound.  I purposely crafted it alongside how I felt more what looked the best and placed a story alongside it. Of course, it means very little when it’s so personal, but having this outlook created two different pieces, with different flavours. One very cold, even down to the no humans or anything that’s “live in it” vs the very organic piece with the hands.  It’s interesting making both with a set theme and a goal how I felt making them. I often found myself very stuck making the the rock one and you call tell in its speed art the indesciveness that lingers all around it. While conversely the more emotions ne gave a different type of frustrating about it not being fully what I had wanted. Originally I wanted a straight cross with hands crumbling into blackness with light at the top. Very late piece. But my heart was swayed by a different stock and such is the mess I went with. Perhaps it would have been more fitting and simpler, but not my style. Maybe I am just wholly incompatible with the concept of less is more. Perhaps I will see after the detail which one got more attention and get back to you. Personally, I prefer neither of them and wish the contest theme was something else. But if you never test your curiosity, how can you evolve, hm?

Taking a break from the challenges and endless backlog of things, for jjbararepairweek was also a mistake. I’m really far behind and my work has gained no other attention, nor care for it. This brings me to my feeling about continuing to make Jojo or fanart manips in general. It’s a struggle balance because none of the people who fanart is made for actually like and vice versa the photmanipers don’t seem to “Get” them unless I write down long explanations of what are they relate too. I suppose that is a balance most people face, but it’s annoying. Returning to just random photosmanips would be a good idea, but I fall utterly uninspired without the framework of a challenge or a goal. Nor the image and base to work off with trying to make things real like with my Jojo manips. When the odd thing comes up like Mad-Max-Kun from Jojolion appear then sure I might indulge into it but staying follow on it I a mistake. It’s tough to do both sides and the frustrations from rarepairweek unable to do the draw or edit the things I want.to is painful. Alongside the tutorials and PSDs seem to have fallen flat. Not to say my confidence has been knocked or I’m moaning that much, it just seems like misplaced effort if nobody cares or wants to indulge with it. I would rather the Tutorials on DA but because of dumb roundabout rules, I can’t. So the audience that would appreciate them simply can’t get to them, and vice versa. This is all very frustrating, no?  But to sit on monthly challenges to carry my workflow seems useless. Anyway, to celebrate Mad Max Kun, here’s the PSD of the piece I made of him.

There’s some interesting contests coming up, I’ve sketched for an idea for the Dandelion Wishes contest that I am super hyped about….even if I doubt my skills to go through with it. The Doppleganger contest I’ve managed to push in a Cioccolata reference with. Although it will be one of those simple manips which requires to me to actually pay attention. I don’t have a lot of faith in myself but with both my Dolomite and Mad Max piece I pushed through it and got to the other end. So maybe I might surprise myself. Again, I just hope it doesn’t fall apart qt the concept.  I suppose it’s worth it just to get more into and t least exist within the “Community”. No the irony is not lost on me the fact that I may complain about not much feedback when I spent almost a month forgetting to add my things to the proper groups outside of the Jojo one. Burned the bridge so hard with the only person who would care about Cioccolata I set pluto on fire.  Advertising is always a pain and all my years of photomaniping I don’t know what my audience is.

I suppose, we can only march forward.

[iamjamesmatthew]

IAJM INTERVIEW w/ OSCAR JOYO (@OscarJoyo)

OSCAR JOYO INTERVIEW by Matthew James IAJM: Hey, Oscar. Before we get into this talk, I’d like to start off by having you introduce yourself to readers as well as myself. OSCAR JOYO: My name is Oscar Joyo and I'm a Chicago-based visual artist who works in both traditional and digital media.I was born in Malawi in 1992 and moved to the US less than a decade later. I was inspired by animation, video games, movies, music, and art books from the 1999 Tarzan film growing up but graduated into anime, figurative painting, and surreal art as I got older. I continue to be influenced by artists of various disciplines to this day. IAJM: Growing up who were some of the artists that inspired you? OJ: As a kid, I was inspired by artists like Akira Toriyama, Alex Ross, James Jean, Glen Keane, and Kehinde Wiley. IAJM: What makes those particular artists so inspirational to you? OJ: Sure, these artists had some strong influences on because of how they combine things together to make a new viewing experience. I also admire their rendering abilities and how well they capture realism. Akira Toriyama was my first influence with his show Dragonball z. His combination of pop culture and fighting films really caught my attention. His way of drawing character was so simple to copy of from that I drew it all the time.As a kid, every kid in my class drew Goku and Vegeta.Honestly, if it weren't for that show and the profound impact it felt on me, I wouldn't be drawing today. I then graduated to Alex Ross with his blend of classical realism and comics which was foreign to me at the time.What makes him great was how he took his passion for comics and realism seen by artists like Norman Rockwell and fused them so beautifully. Glen Keane but more specifically his work on Tarzan is another influence on me. As I got older and really dove into his process and how tedious he had to study animal and human life (keyword: study) to make his characters come to life in his work. Kehinde Wiley with his mix of classic, Renaissance art and black culture really influenced me growing up. He utilised the representational aspect of figure painting so masterfully but what sold me on him was how regal he made his subject matter.It showed the importance of an African American and within us, there is royalty. I can't fully pinpoint what I loved about James Jean but his ability to switch from pop-oriental to comic book to surreal made me want to work with various media. Funny enough, I didn't like his work until I got to college and looked through his "Rebus" book. Like Kehinde with Black culture/Renaissance, James incorporates a traditional style of Japanese paintings with a surreal/representational approach. Overall, what I love about these artists all together is their willingness to study the world around them and then combine things together. For me, it made me embrace being able to move from technique to technique.  IAJM: So now, after having your "creative fire" lit by those artists, when did you begin to take your art as a serious endeavour to pursue? OJ: I was motivated to take art seriously around the age of 15 when my high school art teachers encouraged me to pursue it. It was a huge push for me since I love art in general and knowing that I can make a career of doing what I love.

IAJM: I like the piece of work you recently created inspired by the Marvel Comics Hip Hop variant series - the Danny Brown x Incredible Hulk piece is amazing. Have you contacted anyone from Marvel Comics about officially collaborating with their variant series? OJ: Thank you very much. Haha, unfortunately, I haven't been contacted by Marvel (yet). It would be cool if they contacted me since I have additional ideas for more variant covers. IAJM: What's a typical day in the life of Oscar Joyo like? OJ: My typical day is broken up into 3 branches but simply: I get up, go to work, come back to spend time with my roommates, draw and paint, then sleep or stay up if I had too much caffeine throughout the day. B.Drawing until I can't draw anymore, drinking coffee, and researching more art C.Attempting to leave the house but stay inside because something about the drawing doesn't look right.

IAJM: What big projects do you have planned for 2017? OJ: Currently, I'm working on issue #2 of Nebula Creatives' Lab99 graphic novel, which should be out during the summer of this year. Outside of that and drawing/painting constantly, I'll be making a new body of work. More details to come once I get settled with additional ideas but for now.I'll be playing with music and art. This approach was tested on a recent drawing entitled Jungles LP1, and I plan to make more like it over the coming months.

IAJM: What can you tell us about Nebula Creatives’ Lab99? What the graphic novel about? Where can people find it? OJ: Lab99 is sci-fi graphic series mainly about a Thai woman who wants to break out of being a regular person to search for extraterrestrial life.Through her experience of doing so, we see her handle each encounter and become more in tune with alien life. Currently, we are working on the prologue, which is 3 issues about one of the key characters, who is alien and how he lost contact with his kind as he crashes into planet Earth. You can find it on   nebulacreatives.com/lab-99, if you are outside Chicago.

IAJM: Aside from working on this the comic, do you commission work? If so, where can people go to reach you? OJ: I do get commission work and I'm always open to doing more. People can always reach me through scarjoyoart.wix.com/oscar-joyo or find me on Instagram.

IAJM: Let's look ahead to the future: 5.10.15. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? OJ: Haha, I've thought about this quite a bit actually. Within 5 years, I want to have my MFA in studio arts or illustration. During that time I'd have a strong gallery, illustration, and web presence.I'm doing well as a freelancer and I'm able to split time as a fine artist and illustrator. In 10 years, take it even further with my presence and hope to be travelling a lot. At this point, start considering opening up a gallery or even opening up a fund for high schoolers or anyone who want to pursue art as a career. At the moment, I'm not sure what 15 years would look like but I do know it's going to be very bright for me.

IAJM: Could you describe Chicago's art scene to me? Who are some of the people that consistently putting in work, representing the city? How competitive are the artists? Do you belong to any art collectives? Who are some the artists in your area that you feel people should be paying attention to? OJ: The Chicago art scene, to me, is an expressive, colourful, and culturally accepting landscape. Even though you get to see it about it anywhere, the beauty of art in Chicago is that it transcends beyond the page. I see work by local artists' work on apparel, buildings, videos, bridges, and such which helps make this place an open canvas for creativity. People like Brandon Breaux, Max Sansing, Sam DeCarlo, Antonia McMan, Hebru Brantley, Colin Van Dan Sloujs, and many others continuously put out work to make the city better. This city is filled to the brim of creatives from different walks of life that it makes me want to be a better artist so I can leave my mark. At the moment, I'm not in any collective but I'm not against being in one.

Some other names to look out for are Conrad Javier, Kayla Mahaffey, Joe Renda, Lucas Durham, Kevin Fagaragan, Alyssa Ecarma, Matt Wojtan, and Erik Lindquist. Of course, there are a lot more around the city so I highly recommend checking their Instagram and maybe you'll discover more nearby Chicago. Trust me, there's plenty of us.

IAJM: Last question. Who are some people you would like to thank or acknowledge for supporting you over the years? Is there anyone you would like to shout-out? OJ: Yes. First, I give thanks to God for giving me a wonderful family that continue to support me wherever I go and with all that I do. It wasn't easy but I'm extremely grateful for their tireless love. My inspiring friends, professors, and colleagues from my alma mater, American Academy of Art, my friends and extended family around South Bend, Chicago and especially the ones all over the world who have been on my side. People who have followed my work for a while and have seen my progress. Huge shout out to Eric, Kane, Kevin, Peter, Stacie, Tyler, and Natasha for being weird and teaching me more lessons that I put to use every day (sorta). Most importantly, Bruna, Nyame, Mary, and Steve for really getting me into art.I don't what you saw in me but thank you so much.I wouldn't be here without you all. 

[bakechochin]

The Book Ramblings of May

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

[apologies for the delay with this one: I was binging Good Omens and contemplating spending 200 quid on a pair of shades to match Crowley’s sweet pair]

Falstaff - Robert Nye I’ll admit that I was ready to embrace this book as fucking great right from the word go, because it seemed so up my alley; Falstaff is a titan of the carnivalesque and one of my very favourite Shakespeare characters, and so from the very premise I figured that there was very little that could go wrong. The book takes the form of the memoirs of Sir John Falstolf (no, I don’t know about the ever-changing name spelling nonsense) told over the course of a hundred days, and becomes a journey through history told from the perspective of the fat drunk knight and interjected with lengthy insults to his cook or scribes and even lengthier songs of praise for his own cock or his innumerable sexual exploits. Everything about this is fucking great. In the course of the book you’re given incredibly evocative descriptions of carnivals or tavern debauchery, followed by hilarious anecdotes on fantastically crude subjects, and holding it all together is a narrative voice that can effectively handle both the grandiose reminiscing and the tales of shagging and farting. I also want to praise this book’s fantastic blending of the characters of Shakespeare and other popular fictions of the time with the characteristic Falstaff flare, including one fucking genius link between the character of Bardolph and the stories of the pig-faced woman Tannakin Skinker. Shakespeare’s characters probably are not that difficult to adapt, or at least not inasmuch as adapting the character traits that I perceive as responsible for making Shakespeare’s characters great - you’ll inevitably get some people arguing that Falstaff is Shakespeare’s greatest character because of his complexity, but for me the fact that he is a corpulent tanked-up knight bloated at the seams with sack and fabricated tales of grandeur is enough to make him a quality guy. The archetype is captured splendidly by Nye, but the book doesn’t half remind us of how fucking amazing Shakespearean dialogue is by comparison to Nye’s attempts at Falstaffian humour, and thereby highlights the difference between Shakespeare’s Falstaff and the basic character shape. The book delves into numerous specific events of I Henry IV (and a couple from 2 Henry IV), often quoting lines from Shakespeare’s play verbatim, much to the deficit of the rest of the text that has to string it all together with writing that obviously is not up to snuff with Shakespeare’s amazing writing. The dedication to the plays from which Falstaff was spawned seems at times odd, when a good few chapters are dedicated to extrapolating on one minor event in Part 1, which, to my understanding, was but one of the jests that Hal pulled on Falstaff, and but one of the instances that he was called out for his obvious bullshitting. If Falstaff was repeatedly made a fool of by Hal, he wouldn’t have directly addressed only one of said instances as if it was a big deal, but of course, it was a scene in the play and so it had to be adapted in this book. Whether this was down to Nye not having faith in his own ability to make up more pranks that Hal pulled on Falstaff, or simply because he knew that he had to write in this sequence because he needed a direct link to the play, is a question that I can’t really answer. But let’s talk about Falstaff’s bullshitting, and the complexities that arise from it. Falstaff’s whole shtick is that he is a mighty bullshitter, spinning yarns of heroic exploits and trying to talk his way out of trouble, and thus it stands to reason that his memoirs would reflect this, right? As I first went into the book, I was fully taken in by what I was reading, for although it was dumb, the story was centralised within a world of farce and Rabelaisian carnival, a world in which French armies can be defeated by drunken Englishmen brandishing hogsheads for weapons, men can eat enough food for seven men and still demand dessert, Irishmen will stab you up the arse from below while you sit on the bog, and every woman is inexplicably attracted to a fat drunken knight. It also mythologised Falstaff’s character, that he was conceived atop the knob of the Cerne Abbas giant and that his father died from laughing at nothing in particular. Is this not enough to make the story worthwhile? Would second-guessing Falstaff’s words at every turn, cross-referencing them with what we know of the truth from the Shakespeare plays, not only render the reading experience a pointless trudge, but demystify this world of carnivalesque absurdity? Falstaff’s overblown postulating on whether or not he is lying, or indeed his reasons for lying, are enough to satisfy me without contemplating the book from a meta perspective. There is also the character Scrope, who acts as one of Falstaff’s scribes and uses his position to call out Falstaff’s fabrications for us in a dramatic way, but a) there are discrepancies in his so-called truths and b) he’s a colossal dickhead, so regardless of Scrope’s presence in the story, we’re given the option to still side entirely with Falstaff and his comical version of reality. This is my perspective, but it is worth considering that I am a vacuous fool incapable of complex thought, so adopt my opinions with caution. I do, perhaps, have a few criticisms about Falstaff’s gratuitous descriptions of sexual escapades, not because I’m a prude who can’t stand the mention of the secrets of our own sinful bodies, nor even because it is unjustified in the narrative (because of course Falstaff is going to brag and give too much detail, if not for the sake of posterity than to make his servant scribes uneasy), but because I don’t feel that it fits the comedic tone of the text. Shagging is a staple of fabliaux and folksongs, but the comedy comes from who’s doing the shagging, or where they’re doing the shagging, or the extraneous circumstances surrounding the shagging. This book just describes shagging, which is funny when considering, as mentioned above, the fact that Falstaff within the story is including such titillating or sensational tidbits to vex his scribes (a strand which reaches its high point when Falstaff makes his amanuensis transcribe his words WHILE he is in the act of shagging), but taken as it is, it doesn’t seem in line with the rest of the book and its comedy. When this story has to plod on without its Falstaff-centric source material (or indeed, even from 2 Henry IV, in which Falstaff doesn’t really do a whole lot), it can get rather tedious as it becomes a mere listing of historical events and Falstaff’s minor parts in them, but at that point the book is rather winding down anyway, so perhaps I can’t complain too much. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YEAH, IF YOU’RE INTO SHAKESPEARE

The Hike - Drew Magary I picked this book up because I’d heard it compared to The Third Policeman in terms of it being a journey narrative, and I had a hankering for a book in which the story is not driven by the actions of the character, but rather the situation that they were thrown into, mainly because I’m interested in seeing how different authors go about doing this and not making the resulting narrative crap. Immediately upon going into this book, the acerbic narrative voice reminded me of John Dies at the End, and as the book continued and began to unveil other similarities, most egregiously the technique of using the bizarre weird reality-warping and monster-centric nonsense as a means of juxtaposing or disguising the book’s true content, that of the heinous DMC (that is, the deep meaningful conversation), I thought that I was in trouble. The reason why this is a book ramble, and not just a flat-out review, is that at this point I feel like I’m just rambling about the broad genre of contemporary American horror-centric weird fiction, and so to go through the book point-by-point may be a tad redundant when we already know exactly what to expect from the genre; a review would in all probability just devolve into quibbling about minor semantics. The story follows a man who, getting lost on a hike, stumbles into a world of nightmares and oddities, half of which were presumably inspired by the author’s obscure fears and the rest being absurd non-sequiturs to amp up the kookiness. It is nothing if not memorable, with its foul-mouthed crabs and murderous men wearing the faces of Rottweilers and whatnot. The book eventually develops to be smarter and more twisty-turny than such a randomly-selected clusterfuck of ideas might suggest, but these moments become transitory stops scattered amidst the rambling improvisational D&D campaign that is the main narrative. The story does have a habit of periodically bringing us to a formative experience in our protagonist’s life in the form of dream visions, with some interesting blurring between reality and fiction that doesn’t detract from the sheer fucking ludicrousness of the amount of shit that our protagonist has gone through, or at least the sensational self-reflective tone of these events’ retellings. This put me in mind of John Dies at the End, as did an ineffable sense of self-importance that the protagonist of this book seems to impart. I can’t properly word it, but there’s something to our protagonist’s narration, in that we see the world through his eyes but the retelling seems embellished somewhat to make him seem better off, and the fact that I noticed this at all speaks to me of shoddy characterisation. That’s not to say that the character is an unflappable badass the whole way through the story; it just seems like the character beats are cookie-cutter and that his moments of weakness or breakdown only occur because they have to, in order to make us feel sympathy for him. Both this book and John Dies at the End utilise new nomenclature on the fly for the horrors they find, but in all cases it just seems so pre-meditated, and the insistence on using these terms makes it seem like we ought to be on board with them as well, regardless of how stupid they are. Some of these terms are also tinged with an element of our narrator’s feelings of repulsion or standoffishness, in a manner similar to a downtrodden kid trying to stand up to a bully by referring to him with an insulting nickname. It’s all just rather tonally dissonant, the fact that we have to align with and appreciate our protagonist juxtaposed with the reality of our protagonist not really being that likeable. John Dies at the End (or at least its sequel) attempts to obfuscate the angst of its protagonist by admitting at the end to having a retrospective ghost writer, attributing the changes to the story and relatively inconsistent character fuckery to an unreliable narrator and details being altered in post, but this book lacks this safety net. What this book does have at the end is a bit of life-affirming reality-changing nonsense, and more importantly a fucking sweet twist at the end which, whilst not having much to do with the rest of the story (being dependent on memories and characters who didn’t have much to do with the overall narrative), leaves the story on a bittersweet note. In all my time spent reading classic literature, I’ve really missed experiencing twists that a) I didn’t already know about or wouldn’t have predicted, and b) actually have some fucking oomph. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: PROBABLY

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court - Mark Twain The question of authorial intent loomed over me as I begun reading this book. The introduction places the story firmly within the framework of Twain’s own righteous vengeance at the age he lived in, whereas I was under the impression that the book was naught but a dumb burlesque of middle English romances with some fun anachronisms thrown in for comedic effect. I thought that Twain’s ‘dream of being a knight errant in armour’ was funny as shit, but according to this introduction writer geezer Justin Kaplan (who apparently knows a better way of enjoying the book than myself), Twain’s dream ought to be interpreted as ‘a nightmare of being swaddled in iron, confined and helpless, just as Mark Twain was often to feel confined and helpless in his way of life’. As such, I sought advice from my friend, who told me to just go in with my unsophisticated cap on and I’ll be fine, and also took solace in Twain’s squib 1601, his exercise emulating my main man Rabelais in which famous Elizabethans hit the shit about shit and shagging, to adopt the mentality that Twain is just fucking about and that I don’t need to think too much about what I’m reading. Now I’ve sat through enough seminars of medieval literature to have heard every imaginable inane comment from every single vacuous shitwit grabbing at the lowest hanging fruit possible when it comes to pointing out the silliness of Arthurian romances; I’m a dab fucking hand, albeit unwillingly, at recognising all of this shit, and at suppressing my groans when slack-jawed fuckheads go over the same empty points about how middle English romances are ever so daft. “I mean, what’s up with all these knights running around attacking each other for no reason?!? That doesn’t make much sense!!” they all opine to each other, confident that they’re bringing something original and nuanced to the conversation, to jolly plaudits and insufferable guffaws. (No I’m not bitter about this, I have no idea what you’re talking about). Twain of course touches on all the usual points that you’d expect in a romance parody, but I needn’t have braced myself for an onslaught of unoriginality, as he does so with fantastic wit and evokes an actual comedic image rather than just commenting on the world’s lack of logic. He paints a delightful picture of naive and foolish knights howling with laughter at slapstick and ooo-ing and ah-ing at one another’s exaggerated tales, which is not only a great representation of Arthurian knights to explain their questionable behaviours, but justifies how they are so easily swayed and led by our protagonist Hank Morgan, the eponymous Yankee. I’m also a great fan as to how far they take the delusions of the Arthurian chaps to, believing with complete conviction that a swine pen is an ogre’s castle and that the pigs within are kidnapped noblewomen; there’s a lot of fun to be had with this, and as absurd as it seems, I’m glad that the explanation isn’t any more complex than it just being a result of everyone’s unyielding belief in everything. Our protagonist sets out to whip this century into something resembling nineteenth-century society, and putting aside the suspension of disbelief we must have in Hank’s apparent knowledge of every-fucking-thing imaginable required to accomplish this transformation (from building phone lines and electric fences to a ludicrously precise knowledge of the timing of eclipses), the story is a great romp of technology trumping magic and the grim realities of an unfair world, with some fantastic memorable scenes here and there. The plot somewhat meanders, the stories of Arthurian legend being rather directionless beyond the overarching call for adventure, and so we get a bit of that and we get a bit of blending in with peasant life, but overall the book is made up of a series of encounters and problems to overcome, which is fine to read for the most part (for some adventures are more fun than others). Though I want to pooh-pooh the idea that the story is a castigation or attack on the political structures and struggles of the time, and indeed can continue to pooh-pooh it so long as such content is if not subliminal than overshadowed by the story’s fun content, this unfortunately bubbles to the surface in an overt form when the book draws to a close, with a swift arrival of reality and sudden need for a bloody war. The mask of fun burlesque is stripped away to give us a galling look at a stubborn England, the denizens of which would rather die than change their faulty unfair ways. It’s not enough to tarnish the rest of the book, but it did leave a sour taste in my mouth, not because it’s an objectively bad thing but because scathing attacks of that calibre and of that level of overtness seemed to come rather out of left field. The transformation of the book from one thing to the next is dependent on a swift plot progression that occurs in a short period of time and is conveyed by a massive exposition dump which rushes through the last chapter of the Morte D’Arthur and plunges us into a fight between the Church and our protagonist, a fight that the story, apparently now being a treatise on the inability for people to change and our helplessness in altering the state of things, must regrettably end with our hero losing. But now I’m prattling on about an approach to the text that I was adamant I was not going to take. Don’t let it tarnish the rest of the book; that’s all still good shit. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: YEAH PROBABLY

Tales of the German Imagination (trans. by Peter Wortsman): - ‘The Singing Bone’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, and ‘The Children of Hameln’ (the Brothers Grimm) - I struggle to place the Grimms fairy tales in terms of an analytical approach, and so it’ll suffice to say that these stories are exactly what you’d expect from the Grimms, in that they’re short and dark and make for easy reading - ‘Rune Mountain’ (Ludwig Tieck) - a proper romanticism story with a fantastic dream-like storytelling tone and incredibly evocative imagery throughout - ’St Cecelia or the Power of Music’ (Heinrich von Kleist) - a well-written actualisation of a cool suspenseful horror story concept with a few nice spooky bits, albeit with a rather slow middle and generally anticlimactic end - ‘Peter Schlemiel’ (Adelbert von Chamisso) - an amazing idea for a story that, while bogged down with unexplained magical objects straight out of Hoffmann’s fairy tales popping up every now and then to take the story in weird directions, and based on a social ostracisation that really does not seem like as big a deal as the story makes it out to be, is still very enjoyable - ’The Marble Statue’ (Josef von Eichendorff) - another story that brings to mind Hoffmann’s fairy tales (which I should perhaps instead just consider the archetype for German romanticism?), this time in terms of its romantic setting and soppy protagonist, and indeed its dumb allegorical dream-quest nonsense ending - ‘My Gmunden’ (Peter Altenberg) - so short that I didn’t really know what I was meant to be laughing at - ‘The Magic Egg’ and ‘A New Kind of Plaything’ (Mynona) - absolutely amazing little snippets of madness and laughter at oddity, the first story being an absurdist exercise in stupidity with a cast-aside veneer of meaning to the story, and the second being a jolly examination of a ludicrous idea - ’The Seamstress’ (Rainer Maria Rilke) - a compelling and vaguely unsettling story with fantastic character descriptions of the titular seamstress and an ending that casts our narrator adrift - ‘The Island of Eternal Life’ (Georg Kaiser) - a short and enjoyable story of rapid cartoon-like escalation, albeit with an ending more befitting a cynical satire on humanity - ‘In the Penal Colony’ (Franz Kafka) - a story I’ve read before and my favourite of Kafka’s writings; it’s dark and compelling (if a bit long-winded at point when describing the intricacies of the machine), and has a fantastic culmination (specifically the fate of the Officer) with elements of regret and serious fucking brutality - ‘The Blackbird’ (Robert Musil) - possesses a narrative voice that, while philosophical and high-minded, was not enough to embellish the story’s rather boring content (or at least seemed a tad misused when utilised to describe warfare) - ‘The Lunatic’ (Georg Heym) - over-the-top and gruesome and overall fucking hilarious; godspeed to ridiculously hyperbolic depictions of madmen in literature - ‘A Conversation Concerning Legs’ (Alfred Lichtenstein) - a conversation on one absurd subject, with dialogue that possesses all the necessary elements to make the humour work; it’s matter-of-fact and occasionally stupidly verbose to juxtapose the oddity of the subject matter, there’s rapid escalation from one train of thought to the next, and the conversation ends as abruptly and pointlessly as it had begun - ‘The Onion’ (Kurt Schwitters) - one of the first surrealist stories that I’ve read that has properly made me consider the ineffable and indescribable genius of the minds that concocted it, as well as having a pretty fucking sweet premise even before the text starts getting properly surreal and fragmented - ‘A Raw Recruit’ (Klabund) - a very funny story with a satirical premise I’m well used to - ‘The Time Saver’ (Ignaz Wrobel) - a story with an interesting abstract premise that is continuously built on in a manner that put me in mind of Krzhizhanovsky, but with an ending that didn’t seem very connected to the plot that preceded it (though perhaps that was somewhat the point) - ‘The Tattooed Portrait’ (Egon Erwin Kisch) - perhaps the funniest story in the collection, possessing the satire of people in power and absurd turns of fate to knock esteemed people down a peg as to be found in Gogol or my favourite Leskov short stories - ‘The Experiment or the Victory of the Children’ (Unica Zurn) - a story that takes the same general steps as Mynona’s ‘A New Kind of Plaything’, but seems less tongue-in-cheek and satirical and more like it’s trying to make some sort of grand statement - ’The Secrets of the Princess of Kagran’ (Ingeborg Bachmann) - purportedly a modern day fairy tale (albeit set in a mythologised past full of names for places and people I’m unfamiliar with), with the influence of modernism presumably being evident by the nonsense anticlimactic ending WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YEAH

[sailorrrvenus]

A Digital Landscape Photographer’s Introduction to Film

I am constantly asked questions about how I started and how to start shooting film. So, here we go! This guide is intended to be a story of my introduction to film as a landscape photographer, provide some tips, introductions, and guidance, but in no means is it intended to be a foolproof method of how to shoot film.

Film is a path that’s unique for everyone and is definitely not for everyone, so be prepared for failures and having some trial and error. That’s part of the process!

My introduction to film was very simple. About 7 years ago, I was fully immersed in the digital photography world, and nearly every image I shot was a stitched panorama. The reason I stitched was the drive for resolution – I wanted to print…and print HUGE. Sound familiar?

It was a single trip to the California coast, where I was attempting to stitch a panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge along the shoreline, where I began to become incredibly frustrated with stitching. Everything was moving, and when I got back to the computer, I just couldn’t get the images to stitch properly. Practically everything I had attempted to photograph was ruined. Thus, I began the search on how to create a large panorama in a single frame. The short answer was film.

The more I searched for a solution, the simplest answer was a panoramic camera – a film camera. I settled on a Linhof Technorama 617 SIII, a medium format roll film camera, due to its optical reviews, and the fact that it had a dark slide which allowed me to change lenses mid-roll. This was all Greek to me at the time, but it’s what the reviews said, so I went with it.

My first successful image from a 617 transparency on Fuji Velvia 50 film.

I purchased the camera, threw in a couple rolls of Fuji Velvia 50 (again…because the reviews said it was the best) and started rocking and rolling with the camera (or so I thought.) I sent the rolls out to be developed, and a couple weeks later, I was horrified by the results. Everything was drastically underexposed or overexposed and everything was basically ruined. I kept trying and trying, and after about three or four months, I finally nailed an exposure and the lightbulb came on. Thus, began the love affair with film. It was only the beginning.

Why Shoot Film? What’s the Point?

The Process

Film was the simple choice for me. It achieved the results I wanted to create at that time, shooting a high-resolution panorama in a single frame, but I quickly began to love the process. I have met so many people who began shooting film when they were young, transitioned to digital and have never looked back.

Digital is the height of their experience with photography and it’s exciting for them. For me, digital was an incredible method of learning photography. It provided instantaneous technical feedback, provided me with a skillset in Photoshop and gave me the foundation I needed to even begin to think about film. But, for me, digital photography lacked the soul I crave with film. Everything is too perfect and is quickly becoming more perfect than we had ever anticipated.

Film is a very unique, thoughtful, and tedious process that is not for everyone. For me, it’s meditation. It’s a separation from the anxiety of creating an image when the light is fantastic, knowing you may possibly fail, the film could be ruined, lost, or damaged, and requires the photographer to be calm. Prior to beginning to shoot film, I’d run around during a sunset, stressing about the light, creating multiple compositions, and attempting every shot I could think of. Now, my compositions are thoughtful, planned, and calculated – because they have to be! Film is inherently slow, but I have never viewed this as a crutch.

Having the time away from the exposure of an image to the time you develop it, and until you finally see it on a computer screen is incredibly beneficial to me. To those of you reading this who still photograph digitally, I encourage you to try to wait a week before you digitally process your images from a shoot. Instead of acting purely on the moment, allow time to pass so you can be more thoughtful in editing and processing your work.

A single sheet of 8×10” Fuji Velvia 50, as it sits on my light table. This image is available as a fine art print, in editions of 90, entitled “Eternal Flame.”

Specifically, with large format, composing has now become a meditative process as well. Large format cameras are naturally cumbersome – they take time to set up, compose, and focus. Using this camera, you compose upside down and backward on a ground glass, which has taught me to be more thoughtful with compositions. You’re much more aware of shapes, compositional motion in your images, and patterns, when you are not seeing your composition as your eyes naturally see the world. During the exposure, unlike most SLR and rangefinder cameras, when you’re photographing large format, you are standing next to the camera. You become part of the exposure, timing everything precisely. Again, it’s meditative, thoughtful, and very involved.

The Prints

I am a huge advocate for learning photography through printing your work. I teach for Muench Workshops and it always shocks me how many people choose to never print their work. If you never see your photograph printed larger than what you can see on a computer screen, then why take the photo? In my opinion, a print is just the final process of creating a photograph, and by leaving that step undone, you’re limiting yourself as an artist.

Since I began shooting film, I’ve loved printing so much more. I’m not going to get into the film vs. digital wars here, because I am of the opinion that both have their advantages and disadvantages, especially in print. I will say that I feel prints from film have more character and life. Why? Firstly, there’s a certain way film renders color that I feel will always have an advantage over digital, specifically subtle color.

Secondly, grain! Grain is a bad word for most photographers these days, but with film, you must embrace it. It’s part of its character, and the smaller the format, the larger the grain appears in print. But this isn’t detrimental to the print in my opinion. With grain, the print feels more tangible and has more character.

I personally choose to not enlarge a shot from a 35mm camera to 60×90”, but if you did, you’d just see larger and larger grain. That’s the beauty of it! At a certain point, the prints from a digital camera begin to break down and you begin to see pixelated artifacts. With film, you just begin to see grain. (Note: naturally, unless you’re printing directly from film, you’ll be scanning, so your film image is truly a digital image, so at some point your grain will become pixels…but that would be grossly over-enlarged.)

The Technique

Metering for film is probably my most asked question and deserves its very own blog to come at a later date. What I can simply tell you is that with film, specifically transparency film, it forces you to truly understand the exposure triangle.

I want to note that with each particular film stock, you must meter precisely to achieve the best results with that film, but generally speaking, film can make you a more technical photographer. You must understand and choose your depth of field accurately based on the scene you are wishing to photograph, know how to set your hyperfocal distance, know how to tilt/swing/rise/fall, and then know how to meter and expose.

It takes some work and trial and error, but I guarantee that it will make you a better digital photographer. You will soon begin to slow down and think about what aperture and shutter speed to use, rather than blindly looking at the back of your LCD screen. I challenge every digital photographer to go out on a shoot, tape up the LCD screen, and see if they can make an accurate and proper exposure without using the crutch of instant feedback.

What film has taught me beyond anything else is how to see, understand, and photograph light. With digital photography, you somewhat have a scapegoat in your ability to resolve nearly every detail and tonality in a scene, and it’s getting worse (or better, depending on your platform) by the day. That fateful morning when I was photographing sunrise and captured my first piece of properly exposed film, mentioned above, was not necessarily due to me being technically proficient, as much as it was photographing in quality light.

You may think the term “quality light” is subjective, but as a matter of fact, I feel it is absolutely objective. Film, specifically transparency film (you’ll learn more about this below), has a very low exposure latitude, meaning it can only capture a small dynamic range of light. Within this range (about 5-7 stops of light) is where I truly believe quality light exists. This fatal “flaw” of transparency film has taught me to see within this range of light because I frankly had no other choice. But by limiting my options and only photographing within this boundary, I began to have more successful imagery than ever.

Before, with digital, I was very much in the vein of HDR. Not necessarily crunchy Trey Ratcliff (sorry Trey) HDR, but I would create images where I would have to blend multiple exposures to create a final image in Photoshop. At the time, I thought they looked great, but I was pointing my camera into the sun, making an exposure for the sky, and making an exposure for the incredibly dark, shadow-laden foreground and then blending so that everything was relatively the same exposure.

Film taught me to turn around and look for the good light, rather than attempt to create it in Photoshop. By looking 90 degrees or completely in the opposite direction of the sunset, I was able to capture light ON the subject in a single exposure, within 5-7 stops of dynamic range, and was thus photographing in “quality light.”

Film Sizes and Equipment

35mm

35mm is probably the easiest jump into shooting film. 35mm film is self-contained into little canisters that are pretty painless to use. In many cases, you’ll be able to use your current digital lenses with some film cameras. For instance, remember how I said I learned on digital? I’ve always been a Nikon shooter, and when I switched fully into film, I was able to use some of my old Nikon lenses on a Nikon F5, a late model fully automatic professional film body Nikon made before jumping fully into digital.

With the Nikon F5 (and many other Nikon film cameras) you’re able to use all your modern autofocus F-Mount lenses with the film camera. So with a minimal purchase ($300-$500) for the camera body, you’re ready to start shooting. Film is also incredibly easy to find in 35mm, with a huge array of choices, from B&W to color negative to transparency film, the options are all yours. I use 35mm for telephoto wildlife and landscape work, when I can’t use a tripod, which is very few and far between.

One debatable downside to shooting 35mm is your scans will be relatively small and if you decide to shoot a higher speed film, your shots will be much grainier than larger formats. I’ve had success with drum scans printing 24×36” from a 35mm low-speed transparency, but that’s pushing the limits of the film in my opinion. On a higher speed film, you’d just have to play it by ear. If your intent is to just post online, then maybe 35mm is for you! This past year in Antarctica is the first time I have been truly successful with 35mm paired with telephoto lenses, and I feel its uses for my personal work will be extremely limited.

Camera suggestions

Fully Automatic Cameras

Nikon F5

Nikon F100

Semi Automatic Cameras

Leica M6

Canon AE-1

Fully Manual Cameras

Leica M3

Medium Format

I would have to say that a medium format camera is probably the best bang for your buck if you think you’ll end up wanting to take film fairly seriously. For those seeking the “film look,” or to those wishing to have an overall film camera for portraits, landscape, etc., I think you’ll be most happy with a medium format camera.

Medium format is a camera that uses either 120 or 220 (no longer made) roll film. There are many different formats available that are considered “medium format” and include 6×4.5(cm), 6×6, 6×7, 6×8, 6×9, 6×12 and 6×17. Within each of these formats, there are seemingly endless different kinds of cameras that can fit inside of every budget. With that being said, film has been on the rise in the last few years, and some cameras have absolutely skyrocketed.

My medium format Mamiya 7ii, loaded with negative film somewhere in the backcountry of the Desert Southwest.

You’ll find your more compact and mostly automatic cameras with the smaller formats such as the 6×4.5 (or just 645) cameras. These are very popular with portrait and wedding photographers, but I also think that some of the 645 SLR cameras can be great for landscape photography, specifically if you are backpacking or just want a fully automatic, autofocusing, autowinding camera, and auto metering camera. These cameras also usually have faster optics, so you’ll be able to handhold them in lower light more easily (hence the reason portrait and wedding photographers generally use them.)

So…where to start? I suggest starting simple with a 645 camera. A Pentax 645 N is a great, hardy camera that is well built and has fine optics. As is the Mamiya 645, both AF and earlier models. There are plenty of rangefinder cameras in this format as well that are incredibly small, lightweight, and have amazing optical performance, but have become very expensive in the past few years and can be difficult to use since you can’t see through the lens.

If you’re still itching for a slightly bigger aspect ratio, my favorite is 6×7. I personally use a Mamiya 7ii, which is a rangefinder but is small, lightweight and perfect for the backcountry and air travel. It’s been a magnificent camera for me, and the optical performance is some of the best I have ever used in a medium format camera. If you aren’t as concerned about weight, the Pentax 67 MLU (mirror lockup) is a fine choice and set the standard for landscape photographers in its heyday.

Camera Suggestions

6×4.5

Mamiya 645

Pentax 645 N

Bronica RF645

6×6

Hasselblad 500 c/m

Mamiya 6

6×7

Pentax 67 MLU

Mamiya 7 (7ii)

Mamiya RZ67

Large Format

Large format film ranges from 4×5 (inches) to 8×10, with a few less popular formats in between, such as 5×7. This film comes in sheets, usually in boxes of 10, 20 and 50, and have to be manually loaded into film holders by the photographer in complete darkness. Resolution goes through the roof with 4×5 and continues up with the larger film you begin to use. It’s truly remarkable to see how detailed these sheets of film can be. Large format cameras allow the photographer ultimate control over the image, from focus to perspective control, by the use of camera movements (tilt, swing, rise/fall) to achieve the desired results.

My large format, Arca Swiss 8×10, set up in the field.

Naturally, of this added control comes with a much steeper learning curve. If you are just getting into film and have never worked with a fully manual camera of any kind, then my biggest piece of advice is to steer clear of large format for a spell. Buy a medium format camera and see if you like the process of shooting film, wrap your head around metering, exposing, and processing your film before you make the jump into large format. For me, large format is the most rewarding of all the film cameras, as they are at the height of resolution and I feel the cameras are a joy to work with, but they are naturally cumbersome…all of them.

With that being said, if you feel you’re ready for large format, then, by all means, go for it! That’s an amazing step to take.

Light Meter

Spot meter: As a landscape photographer, you will full control over your film. Because of that, you’ll want to have the ability to spot meter the scene. With a “1-degree spot meter” you’ll be able to meter the shadows, highlights, and everywhere else in between as you point the meter throughout the scene. This will let you build an array of different exposures in your head and decide how you want to expose the scene. This is extremely crucial with transparency film, and not quite as much, but still useful, with negative film.

Now my backup meter, the Sekonic L-558 offers the photographer both a 1 degree spot and incident meter.

Incident Meter: As you peruse the internet, you’ll probably hear something about incident meters. As a landscape photographer, I don’t find incident meters all that useful. The meter exists within a white plastic dome and essentially measures the diffused light your subject is in. So, in other words, you need to have the ability to place your meter in the same light your subject is in, which isn’t always possible with landscape photography.

(I now use a Sekonic L-778 and my backup is a Sekonic L-558 (pictured above), which includes both an incident meter, and a spot meter.)

The Polaroid Method: Back in film’s heyday, Polaroid film (instant film) could be used to check correct exposure. With traditional light metering techniques, you essentially have to blindly guess and trust your exposure based on what you’ve metered, but having the ability to fire off that exposure on a piece of instant film, you were able to check exposures. Well, now that it’s 2019 and Polaroid film in larger formats is essentially dead and gone, we’re stuck in the dark (pun intended.)

But all hope is not lost! You’re a digital photographer, right? Well, you have your light meter in your current camera case – your digital camera, AKA digital Polaroid. If you have a zoom lens from around 18-55 (in full frame), this is a perfect range for both composition and checking your exposure. You’ll be able to meter, dial in your settings, and fire off frames with instant feedback, which you can then translate to your film camera. Cheating? I don’t think so, but it’s definitely extra weight and hassle to carry, and generally I do not generally opt for this method myself. I know a few professional photographers, such as my good friend Alex Burke, who have used this method extremely successfully for quite some time. But it’s a great method to achieving fast results and to learn to expose film properly without as much trial and error.

Film For Landscape Photography

Transparency Film

Transparency film is probably the most rewarding of all film stocks to receive back from your processing lab. Seeing those perfectly exposed transparencies on a light table for the first time is one of the more nerve-wracking and exciting experiences even to this day. There’s really nothing like it. Below is the breakdown of my favorite transparency film stocks that are still available to purchase fresh. Exposing these stocks can be tricky, but ensure that the film IS NOT overexposed. Overexposed transparency film is essentially useless, so if you’re unsure, bracket and meter carefully.

Fuji Velvia 50: My favorite film, hands down. The way Velvia 50 renders soft, subtle color is out of this world. I’ve never been able to capture such subtleties in any other photographic medium and it is, and will remain, my film of choice for 90% of my subject matter. Velvia 50 is very contrasty and can be difficult to use in challenging light. Be careful when you are metering and be wary of a dynamic range beyond 6 or so stops of light. Velvia 50 is best used in soft, reflected light, such as the scene above.

Velvia 50 is a perfect film for intimate scenes such as this, where the contrast is low and the light and color is soft. This image was photographed on an 8×10 sheet of film.

Fuji Velvia 100: Velvia 100 is, in my opinion, more difficult to use than its slower sister (Velvia 50). It’s a very contrasty film and doesn’t render big landscapes very well. Generally, images also have a bit of a magenta cast. With that being said, I think it’s an excellent film for intimate scenes, specifically those with greens, and I use it almost exclusively for my work in the prairie.

Velvia 100 has a strong magenta cast and very high contrast, which can work well in some situations, such as this scene at twilight. Photographed on 8×10 sheet film.

Fuji Provia 100F: Provia is probably my second most used transparency film with a very fine, even grain that’s very wonderful to scan. It’s much less contrasty than either of the Velvia film stocks and isn’t quite as warm. At times, it can have a blue cast, so be careful with the quality of light you use this film in. Having less contrast than other transparency films, Provia is a wonderful choice for very intense sunsets. Where the Velvia film stocks tend to saturate reds and oranges beyond the point of realism, Provia tones them down a bit and makes them more usable for scanning and printing. Overall, Provia is the most usable slide film for this reason.

Provia 100F is a great film for intense sunsets, as it is a bit lower contrast, and not quite as saturated as other transparency films. This was photographed on 120 medium format film on my Mamiya 7ii.

Kodak E100: Until recently, Fujifilm had been the only manufacturer of transparency film stocks. In 2018, Kodak announced its new E100, modeled after its old Ektachrome film stock. It is one of the finer grained films I’ve ever used and can produce very sharp images. It has a very neutral color palette and would be a fine choice for any situation. Currently, it’s only available in 35mm.

Kodak E100 has a very neutral color palette, making it a great overall film. This was photographed on my Nikon F5 with a 70-200mm lens.

Color Negative Film

If you are completely new to film, negative film may be your best choice to start shooting with. Negative film has an incredibly wide exposure latitude and makes it very easy to expose – basically, it’s nearly impossible to overexpose. My tip with negative film is if you’re in doubt about your exposure, meter for the shadows and shoot!

Kodak Ektar 100: Ektar is an amazing negative film that was designed for scanning. It has more contrast and saturation than a typical negative film, which somewhat makes it the “Velvia 50 of the negative world.” It’s very sharp, fine-grained, and produces fantastic results. Ektar can be substituted for transparency film in situations where the dynamic range exceeds the exposure latitude of transparency film, but you want to attain the same level of saturation. It’s generally fairly simple to meter, as it can rarely be overexposed.

Ektar is a high saturation color negative film, which renders colors similarly to Velvia 50. This was photographed on 4×5 sheet film.

Kodak Portra 160: Recently, I’ve been shooting a lot more Portra 160, specifically in 120 and 4×5. As you may have deduced by the name, it was designed as a very low contrast, low saturation film for portraits, but it has absolutely found its way into my kit for landscapes. Because of its low contrast and high exposure latitude, you’re able to capture every detail in a scene with a very muted color palette. It’s definitely not a film for every situation but it has a very appealing aesthetic that I’ll be using more and more over the years to come.

Portra 160 has an outstanding exposure latitude. This image was photographed with no graduated neutral density filter, metered for the shadows. Exposed on my Mamiya 7ii.

Kodak Portra 400: Essentially, everything I wrote for Portra 160 applies to 400, but just in a faster speed. It definitely has larger grain, but it’s very appealing and allows you to be a bit freer compositionally because the higher speed will allow you to generally be free of a tripod. I’ll typically not use this film in sheets, but use it regularly in medium format.

Portra 400 has many similar characteristics as Portra 160, although can be used in lower light situations. This was photographed on my Mamiya 7ii.

Processing

Home Developing

Home developing is generally reserved for those shooting mostly black and white film, which I haven’t discussed here. I have never been much of a black and white photographer, and don’t claim to be an expert with black and white photography, but developing your own black and white film is incredibly easy at home, without very much need for temperature control.

Color negative film (C-41) is a bit more of an issue because it requires more precise and accurate temperature control. I’ve seen methods where people use recirculating water baths designed for cooking to develop their film with, but the easiest method is a Jobo. They are roller processors that are relatively easy to find these days and run anywhere from $750 to $1,000. While developing at home is relatively easy, it can be expensive to invest in the equipment, and dust control also becomes a bit of an issue. If you’re just starting out, I recommend using a professional developing lab.

Developing Lab

Chances are, because you’re just starting out, that you’ll want to use a photographic lab to process your film. This, in my opinion, is the best way to start and the best way to achieve the fastest good results. If you’re just learning to expose film correctly, the last thing you want to be doing is developing it incorrectly, thusly getting skewed results. A few good labs that I use currently and have used in the past are:

AgX Imaging: Mike Lussier owns/operates this lab and is an outstanding person to deal with. He treats every order with precision and care, just as if it were his own film. I now use him exclusively for my E-6 developing. AgX ONLY develops E-6, for C-41 and B&W, you must go elsewhere.

North Coast Photo: This is a great lab on the west coast, and one I’ve used extensively for my C-41 and B&W developing. They achieve consistently good results and have been great to work with.

Scanning

Scanning is an art form within itself. Just like developing, a quality scan can make or break a film image. Improper handling and care of the negatives, a poor quality scanner, or just an inexperienced operator can be very detrimental to the outcome of your work. If you are just beginning to shoot film, pay the extra bit to get your film scanned by the lab you are processing with. This way, you know you’ll be achieving quality results from a trained operator. When you want to begin scanning your own work, generally the first step is investing in a flatbed scanner.

Flatbed Scanning

Flatbed scans are generally what most people gravitate towards when first scanning their work, and even some professionals never scan any other way. Good quality flatbed scanners offer good quality scans, once you learn to operate them. Generally speaking, today Epson is making the best consumer flatbed scanner on the market, the V800 or V850. These scanners provide the end user a quick and easy way to get decent scans from their film, while not breaking the bank. They run about $700-$800 usually and a software package is included with the camera. I highly suggest not skimping and buying a used scanner, as if they are improperly cared for, they can become full of dust and you’ll be cleaning dust out of your images for years to come.

Pros of flatbed scans:

Very easy to use

Relatively inexpensive

Produce decent quality scans for photographers who don’t do a lot of printing

Cons of flatbed scans:

Non-optimal film flatness, which can cause out of focus ares on the scans

Difficult to grain focus, which makes the end result not very sharp

Limited dust control

Not optimal for printing – the sharpness is generally lacking from most flatbed scans

For the most part, flatbed scans will accomplish 90% of your needs as a film photographer. They’re inexpensive, easy to set up and use, and it requires little effort put forth to get decent quality digital images from your film. For those who are doing a lot of printing or need ultimate color duplication, sharpness, and clarity, a drum scan may be in order.

Drum Scanning

Drum scanning is a relatively complicated process that involves a very skilled operator, specialized equipment, and a high level of dust control and precision. Generally, you won’t be going out and buying yourself a drum scanner. There are commercial labs across the country that provide drum scanning services for those photographers wishing to have the most accurate digital replication of your original film possible. This process can be expensive, but the results are absolutely worth it if you are needing that level of scan. In 2016, I purchased a drum scanner for my own use, built a dust-controlled studio, and began commercially offering my drum scans for photographers.

In Conclusion

So, you must now ask yourself, “Why?” Why do you want to shoot film? Is it a particular look you’re going for in your images? Is it because you want to be a better photographer? Or do you just want a challenge? Or do you just want to be cool on Instagram?

P.S. If you’re interested in further instruction, feel free to contact me, as I offer many private and group photography workshops throughout the year.

About the author: Michael Strickland is a large format landscape and nature photographer based out of Kansas. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work on his website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This article was also published here.

source https://petapixel.com/2019/01/18/a-digital-landscape-photographers-introduction-to-film/

[pauldeckerus]

A Digital Landscape Photographer’s Introduction to Film

I am constantly asked questions about how I started and how to start shooting film. So, here we go! This guide is intended to be a story of my introduction to film as a landscape photographer, provide some tips, introductions, and guidance, but in no means is it intended to be a foolproof method of how to shoot film.

Film is a path that’s unique for everyone and is definitely not for everyone, so be prepared for failures and having some trial and error. That’s part of the process!

My introduction to film was very simple. About 7 years ago, I was fully immersed in the digital photography world, and nearly every image I shot was a stitched panorama. The reason I stitched was the drive for resolution – I wanted to print…and print HUGE. Sound familiar?

It was a single trip to the California coast, where I was attempting to stitch a panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge along the shoreline, where I began to become incredibly frustrated with stitching. Everything was moving, and when I got back to the computer, I just couldn’t get the images to stitch properly. Practically everything I had attempted to photograph was ruined. Thus, I began the search on how to create a large panorama in a single frame. The short answer was film.

The more I searched for a solution, the simplest answer was a panoramic camera – a film camera. I settled on a Linhof Technorama 617 SIII, a medium format roll film camera, due to its optical reviews, and the fact that it had a dark slide which allowed me to change lenses mid-roll. This was all Greek to me at the time, but it’s what the reviews said, so I went with it.

My first successful image from a 617 transparency on Fuji Velvia 50 film.

I purchased the camera, threw in a couple rolls of Fuji Velvia 50 (again…because the reviews said it was the best) and started rocking and rolling with the camera (or so I thought.) I sent the rolls out to be developed, and a couple weeks later, I was horrified by the results. Everything was drastically underexposed or overexposed and everything was basically ruined. I kept trying and trying, and after about three or four months, I finally nailed an exposure and the lightbulb came on. Thus, began the love affair with film. It was only the beginning.

Why Shoot Film? What’s the Point?

The Process

Film was the simple choice for me. It achieved the results I wanted to create at that time, shooting a high-resolution panorama in a single frame, but I quickly began to love the process. I have met so many people who began shooting film when they were young, transitioned to digital and have never looked back.

Digital is the height of their experience with photography and it’s exciting for them. For me, digital was an incredible method of learning photography. It provided instantaneous technical feedback, provided me with a skillset in Photoshop and gave me the foundation I needed to even begin to think about film. But, for me, digital photography lacked the soul I crave with film. Everything is too perfect and is quickly becoming more perfect than we had ever anticipated.

Film is a very unique, thoughtful, and tedious process that is not for everyone. For me, it’s meditation. It’s a separation from the anxiety of creating an image when the light is fantastic, knowing you may possibly fail, the film could be ruined, lost, or damaged, and requires the photographer to be calm. Prior to beginning to shoot film, I’d run around during a sunset, stressing about the light, creating multiple compositions, and attempting every shot I could think of. Now, my compositions are thoughtful, planned, and calculated – because they have to be! Film is inherently slow, but I have never viewed this as a crutch.

Having the time away from the exposure of an image to the time you develop it, and until you finally see it on a computer screen is incredibly beneficial to me. To those of you reading this who still photograph digitally, I encourage you to try to wait a week before you digitally process your images from a shoot. Instead of acting purely on the moment, allow time to pass so you can be more thoughtful in editing and processing your work.

A single sheet of 8×10” Fuji Velvia 50, as it sits on my light table. This image is available as a fine art print, in editions of 90, entitled “Eternal Flame.”

Specifically, with large format, composing has now become a meditative process as well. Large format cameras are naturally cumbersome – they take time to set up, compose, and focus. Using this camera, you compose upside down and backward on a ground glass, which has taught me to be more thoughtful with compositions. You’re much more aware of shapes, compositional motion in your images, and patterns, when you are not seeing your composition as your eyes naturally see the world. During the exposure, unlike most SLR and rangefinder cameras, when you’re photographing large format, you are standing next to the camera. You become part of the exposure, timing everything precisely. Again, it’s meditative, thoughtful, and very involved.

The Prints

I am a huge advocate for learning photography through printing your work. I teach for Muench Workshops and it always shocks me how many people choose to never print their work. If you never see your photograph printed larger than what you can see on a computer screen, then why take the photo? In my opinion, a print is just the final process of creating a photograph, and by leaving that step undone, you’re limiting yourself as an artist.

Since I began shooting film, I’ve loved printing so much more. I’m not going to get into the film vs. digital wars here, because I am of the opinion that both have their advantages and disadvantages, especially in print. I will say that I feel prints from film have more character and life. Why? Firstly, there’s a certain way film renders color that I feel will always have an advantage over digital, specifically subtle color.

Secondly, grain! Grain is a bad word for most photographers these days, but with film, you must embrace it. It’s part of its character, and the smaller the format, the larger the grain appears in print. But this isn’t detrimental to the print in my opinion. With grain, the print feels more tangible and has more character.

I personally choose to not enlarge a shot from a 35mm camera to 60×90”, but if you did, you’d just see larger and larger grain. That’s the beauty of it! At a certain point, the prints from a digital camera begin to break down and you begin to see pixelated artifacts. With film, you just begin to see grain. (Note: naturally, unless you’re printing directly from film, you’ll be scanning, so your film image is truly a digital image, so at some point your grain will become pixels…but that would be grossly over-enlarged.)

The Technique

Metering for film is probably my most asked question and deserves its very own blog to come at a later date. What I can simply tell you is that with film, specifically transparency film, it forces you to truly understand the exposure triangle.

I want to note that with each particular film stock, you must meter precisely to achieve the best results with that film, but generally speaking, film can make you a more technical photographer. You must understand and choose your depth of field accurately based on the scene you are wishing to photograph, know how to set your hyperfocal distance, know how to tilt/swing/rise/fall, and then know how to meter and expose.

It takes some work and trial and error, but I guarantee that it will make you a better digital photographer. You will soon begin to slow down and think about what aperture and shutter speed to use, rather than blindly looking at the back of your LCD screen. I challenge every digital photographer to go out on a shoot, tape up the LCD screen, and see if they can make an accurate and proper exposure without using the crutch of instant feedback.

What film has taught me beyond anything else is how to see, understand, and photograph light. With digital photography, you somewhat have a scapegoat in your ability to resolve nearly every detail and tonality in a scene, and it’s getting worse (or better, depending on your platform) by the day. That fateful morning when I was photographing sunrise and captured my first piece of properly exposed film, mentioned above, was not necessarily due to me being technically proficient, as much as it was photographing in quality light.

You may think the term “quality light” is subjective, but as a matter of fact, I feel it is absolutely objective. Film, specifically transparency film (you’ll learn more about this below), has a very low exposure latitude, meaning it can only capture a small dynamic range of light. Within this range (about 5-7 stops of light) is where I truly believe quality light exists. This fatal “flaw” of transparency film has taught me to see within this range of light because I frankly had no other choice. But by limiting my options and only photographing within this boundary, I began to have more successful imagery than ever.

Before, with digital, I was very much in the vein of HDR. Not necessarily crunchy Trey Ratcliff (sorry Trey) HDR, but I would create images where I would have to blend multiple exposures to create a final image in Photoshop. At the time, I thought they looked great, but I was pointing my camera into the sun, making an exposure for the sky, and making an exposure for the incredibly dark, shadow-laden foreground and then blending so that everything was relatively the same exposure.

Film taught me to turn around and look for the good light, rather than attempt to create it in Photoshop. By looking 90 degrees or completely in the opposite direction of the sunset, I was able to capture light ON the subject in a single exposure, within 5-7 stops of dynamic range, and was thus photographing in “quality light.”

Film Sizes and Equipment

35mm

35mm is probably the easiest jump into shooting film. 35mm film is self-contained into little canisters that are pretty painless to use. In many cases, you’ll be able to use your current digital lenses with some film cameras. For instance, remember how I said I learned on digital? I’ve always been a Nikon shooter, and when I switched fully into film, I was able to use some of my old Nikon lenses on a Nikon F5, a late model fully automatic professional film body Nikon made before jumping fully into digital.

With the Nikon F5 (and many other Nikon film cameras) you’re able to use all your modern autofocus F-Mount lenses with the film camera. So with a minimal purchase ($300-$500) for the camera body, you’re ready to start shooting. Film is also incredibly easy to find in 35mm, with a huge array of choices, from B&W to color negative to transparency film, the options are all yours. I use 35mm for telephoto wildlife and landscape work, when I can’t use a tripod, which is very few and far between.

One debatable downside to shooting 35mm is your scans will be relatively small and if you decide to shoot a higher speed film, your shots will be much grainier than larger formats. I’ve had success with drum scans printing 24×36” from a 35mm low-speed transparency, but that’s pushing the limits of the film in my opinion. On a higher speed film, you’d just have to play it by ear. If your intent is to just post online, then maybe 35mm is for you! This past year in Antarctica is the first time I have been truly successful with 35mm paired with telephoto lenses, and I feel its uses for my personal work will be extremely limited.

Camera suggestions

Fully Automatic Cameras

Nikon F5

Nikon F100

Semi Automatic Cameras

Leica M6

Canon AE-1

Fully Manual Cameras

Leica M3

Medium Format

I would have to say that a medium format camera is probably the best bang for your buck if you think you’ll end up wanting to take film fairly seriously. For those seeking the “film look,” or to those wishing to have an overall film camera for portraits, landscape, etc., I think you’ll be most happy with a medium format camera.

Medium format is a camera that uses either 120 or 220 (no longer made) roll film. There are many different formats available that are considered “medium format” and include 6×4.5(cm), 6×6, 6×7, 6×8, 6×9, 6×12 and 6×17. Within each of these formats, there are seemingly endless different kinds of cameras that can fit inside of every budget. With that being said, film has been on the rise in the last few years, and some cameras have absolutely skyrocketed.

My medium format Mamiya 7ii, loaded with negative film somewhere in the backcountry of the Desert Southwest.

You’ll find your more compact and mostly automatic cameras with the smaller formats such as the 6×4.5 (or just 645) cameras. These are very popular with portrait and wedding photographers, but I also think that some of the 645 SLR cameras can be great for landscape photography, specifically if you are backpacking or just want a fully automatic, autofocusing, autowinding camera, and auto metering camera. These cameras also usually have faster optics, so you’ll be able to handhold them in lower light more easily (hence the reason portrait and wedding photographers generally use them.)

So…where to start? I suggest starting simple with a 645 camera. A Pentax 645 N is a great, hardy camera that is well built and has fine optics. As is the Mamiya 645, both AF and earlier models. There are plenty of rangefinder cameras in this format as well that are incredibly small, lightweight, and have amazing optical performance, but have become very expensive in the past few years and can be difficult to use since you can’t see through the lens.

If you’re still itching for a slightly bigger aspect ratio, my favorite is 6×7. I personally use a Mamiya 7ii, which is a rangefinder but is small, lightweight and perfect for the backcountry and air travel. It’s been a magnificent camera for me, and the optical performance is some of the best I have ever used in a medium format camera. If you aren’t as concerned about weight, the Pentax 67 MLU (mirror lockup) is a fine choice and set the standard for landscape photographers in its heyday.

Camera Suggestions

6×4.5

Mamiya 645

Pentax 645 N

Bronica RF645

6×6

Hasselblad 500 c/m

Mamiya 6

6×7

Pentax 67 MLU

Mamiya 7 (7ii)

Mamiya RZ67

Large Format

Large format film ranges from 4×5 (inches) to 8×10, with a few less popular formats in between, such as 5×7. This film comes in sheets, usually in boxes of 10, 20 and 50, and have to be manually loaded into film holders by the photographer in complete darkness. Resolution goes through the roof with 4×5 and continues up with the larger film you begin to use. It’s truly remarkable to see how detailed these sheets of film can be. Large format cameras allow the photographer ultimate control over the image, from focus to perspective control, by the use of camera movements (tilt, swing, rise/fall) to achieve the desired results.

My large format, Arca Swiss 8×10, set up in the field.

Naturally, of this added control comes with a much steeper learning curve. If you are just getting into film and have never worked with a fully manual camera of any kind, then my biggest piece of advice is to steer clear of large format for a spell. Buy a medium format camera and see if you like the process of shooting film, wrap your head around metering, exposing, and processing your film before you make the jump into large format. For me, large format is the most rewarding of all the film cameras, as they are at the height of resolution and I feel the cameras are a joy to work with, but they are naturally cumbersome…all of them.

With that being said, if you feel you’re ready for large format, then, by all means, go for it! That’s an amazing step to take.

Light Meter

Spot meter: As a landscape photographer, you will full control over your film. Because of that, you’ll want to have the ability to spot meter the scene. With a “1-degree spot meter” you’ll be able to meter the shadows, highlights, and everywhere else in between as you point the meter throughout the scene. This will let you build an array of different exposures in your head and decide how you want to expose the scene. This is extremely crucial with transparency film, and not quite as much, but still useful, with negative film.

Now my backup meter, the Sekonic L-558 offers the photographer both a 1 degree spot and incident meter.

Incident Meter: As you peruse the internet, you’ll probably hear something about incident meters. As a landscape photographer, I don’t find incident meters all that useful. The meter exists within a white plastic dome and essentially measures the diffused light your subject is in. So, in other words, you need to have the ability to place your meter in the same light your subject is in, which isn’t always possible with landscape photography.

(I now use a Sekonic L-778 and my backup is a Sekonic L-558 (pictured above), which includes both an incident meter, and a spot meter.)

The Polaroid Method: Back in film’s heyday, Polaroid film (instant film) could be used to check correct exposure. With traditional light metering techniques, you essentially have to blindly guess and trust your exposure based on what you’ve metered, but having the ability to fire off that exposure on a piece of instant film, you were able to check exposures. Well, now that it’s 2019 and Polaroid film in larger formats is essentially dead and gone, we’re stuck in the dark (pun intended.)

But all hope is not lost! You’re a digital photographer, right? Well, you have your light meter in your current camera case – your digital camera, AKA digital Polaroid. If you have a zoom lens from around 18-55 (in full frame), this is a perfect range for both composition and checking your exposure. You’ll be able to meter, dial in your settings, and fire off frames with instant feedback, which you can then translate to your film camera. Cheating? I don’t think so, but it’s definitely extra weight and hassle to carry, and generally I do not generally opt for this method myself. I know a few professional photographers, such as my good friend Alex Burke, who have used this method extremely successfully for quite some time. But it’s a great method to achieving fast results and to learn to expose film properly without as much trial and error.

Film For Landscape Photography

Transparency Film

Transparency film is probably the most rewarding of all film stocks to receive back from your processing lab. Seeing those perfectly exposed transparencies on a light table for the first time is one of the more nerve-wracking and exciting experiences even to this day. There’s really nothing like it. Below is the breakdown of my favorite transparency film stocks that are still available to purchase fresh. Exposing these stocks can be tricky, but ensure that the film IS NOT overexposed. Overexposed transparency film is essentially useless, so if you’re unsure, bracket and meter carefully.

Fuji Velvia 50: My favorite film, hands down. The way Velvia 50 renders soft, subtle color is out of this world. I’ve never been able to capture such subtleties in any other photographic medium and it is, and will remain, my film of choice for 90% of my subject matter. Velvia 50 is very contrasty and can be difficult to use in challenging light. Be careful when you are metering and be wary of a dynamic range beyond 6 or so stops of light. Velvia 50 is best used in soft, reflected light, such as the scene above.

Velvia 50 is a perfect film for intimate scenes such as this, where the contrast is low and the light and color is soft. This image was photographed on an 8×10 sheet of film.

Fuji Velvia 100: Velvia 100 is, in my opinion, more difficult to use than its slower sister (Velvia 50). It’s a very contrasty film and doesn’t render big landscapes very well. Generally, images also have a bit of a magenta cast. With that being said, I think it’s an excellent film for intimate scenes, specifically those with greens, and I use it almost exclusively for my work in the prairie.

Velvia 100 has a strong magenta cast and very high contrast, which can work well in some situations, such as this scene at twilight. Photographed on 8×10 sheet film.

Fuji Provia 100F: Provia is probably my second most used transparency film with a very fine, even grain that’s very wonderful to scan. It’s much less contrasty than either of the Velvia film stocks and isn’t quite as warm. At times, it can have a blue cast, so be careful with the quality of light you use this film in. Having less contrast than other transparency films, Provia is a wonderful choice for very intense sunsets. Where the Velvia film stocks tend to saturate reds and oranges beyond the point of realism, Provia tones them down a bit and makes them more usable for scanning and printing. Overall, Provia is the most usable slide film for this reason.

Provia 100F is a great film for intense sunsets, as it is a bit lower contrast, and not quite as saturated as other transparency films. This was photographed on 120 medium format film on my Mamiya 7ii.

Kodak E100: Until recently, Fujifilm had been the only manufacturer of transparency film stocks. In 2018, Kodak announced its new E100, modeled after its old Ektachrome film stock. It is one of the finer grained films I’ve ever used and can produce very sharp images. It has a very neutral color palette and would be a fine choice for any situation. Currently, it’s only available in 35mm.

Kodak E100 has a very neutral color palette, making it a great overall film. This was photographed on my Nikon F5 with a 70-200mm lens.

Color Negative Film

If you are completely new to film, negative film may be your best choice to start shooting with. Negative film has an incredibly wide exposure latitude and makes it very easy to expose – basically, it’s nearly impossible to overexpose. My tip with negative film is if you’re in doubt about your exposure, meter for the shadows and shoot!

Kodak Ektar 100: Ektar is an amazing negative film that was designed for scanning. It has more contrast and saturation than a typical negative film, which somewhat makes it the “Velvia 50 of the negative world.” It’s very sharp, fine-grained, and produces fantastic results. Ektar can be substituted for transparency film in situations where the dynamic range exceeds the exposure latitude of transparency film, but you want to attain the same level of saturation. It’s generally fairly simple to meter, as it can rarely be overexposed.

Ektar is a high saturation color negative film, which renders colors similarly to Velvia 50. This was photographed on 4×5 sheet film.

Kodak Portra 160: Recently, I’ve been shooting a lot more Portra 160, specifically in 120 and 4×5. As you may have deduced by the name, it was designed as a very low contrast, low saturation film for portraits, but it has absolutely found its way into my kit for landscapes. Because of its low contrast and high exposure latitude, you’re able to capture every detail in a scene with a very muted color palette. It’s definitely not a film for every situation but it has a very appealing aesthetic that I’ll be using more and more over the years to come.

Portra 160 has an outstanding exposure latitude. This image was photographed with no graduated neutral density filter, metered for the shadows. Exposed on my Mamiya 7ii.

Kodak Portra 400: Essentially, everything I wrote for Portra 160 applies to 400, but just in a faster speed. It definitely has larger grain, but it’s very appealing and allows you to be a bit freer compositionally because the higher speed will allow you to generally be free of a tripod. I’ll typically not use this film in sheets, but use it regularly in medium format.

Portra 400 has many similar characteristics as Portra 160, although can be used in lower light situations. This was photographed on my Mamiya 7ii.

Processing

Home Developing

Home developing is generally reserved for those shooting mostly black and white film, which I haven’t discussed here. I have never been much of a black and white photographer, and don’t claim to be an expert with black and white photography, but developing your own black and white film is incredibly easy at home, without very much need for temperature control.

Color negative film (C-41) is a bit more of an issue because it requires more precise and accurate temperature control. I’ve seen methods where people use recirculating water baths designed for cooking to develop their film with, but the easiest method is a Jobo. They are roller processors that are relatively easy to find these days and run anywhere from $750 to $1,000. While developing at home is relatively easy, it can be expensive to invest in the equipment, and dust control also becomes a bit of an issue. If you’re just starting out, I recommend using a professional developing lab.

Developing Lab

Chances are, because you’re just starting out, that you’ll want to use a photographic lab to process your film. This, in my opinion, is the best way to start and the best way to achieve the fastest good results. If you’re just learning to expose film correctly, the last thing you want to be doing is developing it incorrectly, thusly getting skewed results. A few good labs that I use currently and have used in the past are:

AgX Imaging: Mike Lussier owns/operates this lab and is an outstanding person to deal with. He treats every order with precision and care, just as if it were his own film. I now use him exclusively for my E-6 developing. AgX ONLY develops E-6, for C-41 and B&W, you must go elsewhere.

North Coast Photo: This is a great lab on the west coast, and one I’ve used extensively for my C-41 and B&W developing. They achieve consistently good results and have been great to work with.

Scanning

Scanning is an art form within itself. Just like developing, a quality scan can make or break a film image. Improper handling and care of the negatives, a poor quality scanner, or just an inexperienced operator can be very detrimental to the outcome of your work. If you are just beginning to shoot film, pay the extra bit to get your film scanned by the lab you are processing with. This way, you know you’ll be achieving quality results from a trained operator. When you want to begin scanning your own work, generally the first step is investing in a flatbed scanner.

Flatbed Scanning

Flatbed scans are generally what most people gravitate towards when first scanning their work, and even some professionals never scan any other way. Good quality flatbed scanners offer good quality scans, once you learn to operate them. Generally speaking, today Epson is making the best consumer flatbed scanner on the market, the V800 or V850. These scanners provide the end user a quick and easy way to get decent scans from their film, while not breaking the bank. They run about $700-$800 usually and a software package is included with the camera. I highly suggest not skimping and buying a used scanner, as if they are improperly cared for, they can become full of dust and you’ll be cleaning dust out of your images for years to come.

Pros of flatbed scans:

Very easy to use

Relatively inexpensive

Produce decent quality scans for photographers who don’t do a lot of printing

Cons of flatbed scans:

Non-optimal film flatness, which can cause out of focus ares on the scans

Difficult to grain focus, which makes the end result not very sharp

Limited dust control

Not optimal for printing – the sharpness is generally lacking from most flatbed scans

For the most part, flatbed scans will accomplish 90% of your needs as a film photographer. They’re inexpensive, easy to set up and use, and it requires little effort put forth to get decent quality digital images from your film. For those who are doing a lot of printing or need ultimate color duplication, sharpness, and clarity, a drum scan may be in order.

Drum Scanning

Drum scanning is a relatively complicated process that involves a very skilled operator, specialized equipment, and a high level of dust control and precision. Generally, you won’t be going out and buying yourself a drum scanner. There are commercial labs across the country that provide drum scanning services for those photographers wishing to have the most accurate digital replication of your original film possible. This process can be expensive, but the results are absolutely worth it if you are needing that level of scan. In 2016, I purchased a drum scanner for my own use, built a dust-controlled studio, and began commercially offering my drum scans for photographers.

In Conclusion

So, you must now ask yourself, “Why?” Why do you want to shoot film? Is it a particular look you’re going for in your images? Is it because you want to be a better photographer? Or do you just want a challenge? Or do you just want to be cool on Instagram?

P.S. If you’re interested in further instruction, feel free to contact me, as I offer many private and group photography workshops throughout the year.

About the author: Michael Strickland is a large format landscape and nature photographer based out of Kansas. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work on his website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This article was also published here.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/01/18/a-digital-landscape-photographers-introduction-to-film/

[enthuonstechnologies]

Reliable Web Development Company from India

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What brings a web development company on the top, besides being detailed oriented? We will tell you that secret. It is all about knowing how to incorporate the ideal blend of the great dose of creativity together with the high-quality solutions that their expert team makes every day. Besides that, the modern technologies also play a huge role in the quality of the web developing work. Using them can provide you the finest services which will improve your web developing. Those are, for example, Ajax, PHP, Cold Fusion and much more. They never stop upgrading themselves, and that is also a key for someone's success. As the world of the technology changes every day, one must keep in touch with those changes, and moderate their way of work. Of course, such amount of effort is needed if you want to be the top quality and to be able to provide such services.

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Resource by : https://www.prlog.org/12666451-reliable-web-development-company-from-india.html

[selflesskindness]

Let’s learn how to grieve

“It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.” Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross 

I am learning how to grieve. Those who know me well will know that I do not handle death well. No matter how little we’ve interacted, the death of someone who once crossed my life never fails to leave a dent in me. I would be incapacitated for a while as I struggle to sort out my thoughts and emotions. Sadness, regret and emptiness are but some representation of the emotional turmoil I can have within. When I entered medical school, I acknowledge this fact of mine and I knew that I must learn how to deal with it, as inevitably, I will be facing death a lot more often when I start seeing patients.

Today, I lost a friend. Someone whom I have known for 8 years now, since secondary 1. He was a cheerful guy who never fails to make light of any situation. He brought laughter and a hearty mood to the people around him. We shared quite a few common things. I remember fondly the days we were playing trading card games together, discussing our favourite anime and them chill sessions at MacDonalds just talking crap and relaxing. New of his death came so suddenly. None of would have expected it. Initially, we thought it was an elaborate prank. Time told otherwise. As I prepare to see him tomorrow at the wake, I felt the need to first settle my heart.

In the past 2 years, I have seen the passing of 4 friends. It scares me as with each passing, the person who left became closer and closer to home. This friend, was by far, the closest to me amongst the 4. While we did not bare our hearts to each other in terms of emotions and sharing of tough times, we did spend a lot of time laughing together. He was a big part of my childhood and teenage days. Days I remember fondly. Days that shaped me into who I am today.

I fear the inevitable. I fear the day where I lose the people closest to me. Where the pillars of my life start to crumble. I know that in the future, I will find new pillars as I meet more and more people. However, family will always be the oldest and strongest. Yet time spares no one, and we all know the inevitable will come. It is just a matter of when. I fear the day when it comes and I fear the way I will react. I don’t know how much I will change but I know I will be very affected. Perhaps these past few deaths are then trials to build me up to that inevitable days.

Some people once told me that as a doctor, I must learn how to detach myself so that I will not be so affected by every death such that I lose the ability to think properly and to care for my other patients and even my own loved ones. I didn’t want to accept that and I know that I am not one who can detach like that. I feel every emotion very deeply and get attached to people and things very easily. I would like to think of that as a good thing though. As much as it can hurt me a lot, it has also allowed me to empathise easily with people and to be sensitive enough to not hurt the people I love.

I once told someone important to me that I wanted to live feeling all the emotions raw and fully. I do not want to deny any of them for these emotions are what reminds me that I am alive and makes me me. Emotions are after all what makes us humans irrational beings and yet they are also what makes us truly human. As much as I dislike sadness, I must come to terms with it and to come to accept it.

Talk to people. Cry. Read articles of other’s experiences. Talk some more. Face death head on and confront your feelings. There is nothing else we can do but to get it out, face it and then go on with life. We must face it to accept it. Talking about death makes us feel better. It cannot be left to fester and grow. No doubt it will be hard, but remember that this is part and parcel of life. Without death, how will life then be appreciated truly.

With much reflections about my feelings and my thoughts, here are some things I have come to realise.

Much like fear and many other things in life, sadness is neither good nor bad. It is unavoidable and is but a component of the human condition. What matters then, is how one responds to it. Our personalities and our surrounding environments can change how we perceive and work around sadness and grief. In some ways, one can see grief as an aspect of love. It reflects the ability to connect to people for if you can feel grief, it must mean that the person meant something to you and you have once loved the person for who they were. These connections that allow us to feel grief are then the very same that allows us to love. As we grief, we learn to appreciate the other things we have in life. We learn to be kinder, stronger and more intentional in loving people. As our capacity to grieve increases, so does our capacity to love.

However, when not handled well, grief can incapacitate people. It can overpower lives and causes PTSD, burnouts and depression. There is a need to build up the ability to handle this emotional omnipresence, as some would call it, to engage it somehow so that it blends into one’s life and not overpower it. We must learn how to walk with and alongside grief. To feel it fully and yet not allow it to affect our functionality. We need it to teach us empathy and kindness and yet not make us lose our ability to continue loving others. We cannot fear grief and neither can we escape it. Rather, there is a need to be attuned to grief and allow it its due. We must learn how to grieve.

Integrating this sadness while still being able to function and give of yourself is therefore necessarily a work in progress. There is no perfect formula for handling grief and everyone should take their own routes to reach a similar conclusion.

In medicine, the poignancy from the sadness can be the fuel for what flows from us to the next patient. With some things beyond our control, as we grieve the loss of one, we must channel this to allow us to better care for the next. If allowed to consume and overpower, this sadness can render us unable to connect with our other patients. If we try to escape and avoid this sadness, we may become unable or unwilling to empathise with our patients. As it worsens, we can even become someone else and our relationships with our loved ones and family will undoubtedly be affected. We will become robots repeating routines, giving shoddy work at best as we try to harden our hearts. Where then is the art of medicine.

Being cognizant of the ability to feel sad is critical to maintaining ourselves. It is necessary, to remind us to appreciate the privileges we have, of what it means to enter the lives of other people. To be so close to the fears and vulnerabilities of the patients we vowed to care for. It offers perspectives that is often hard to see when all is bright and happy. And yet amidst the advancement of medical technology and all the good work we think we do, it also serves as a dose of humility about the limitations of medicine and ultimately the fragility and preciousness of the human life.

To be strong means to be able to fall, accept the weakness, grow and come back up again. We all experience sadness and grief and we all must learn to accept and move on with life. However, it is hard to do so alone. No one man is an island. Be willing to reach out to people and people will reach out to you. Remember, it is a blessing to be loved and to be able to love. As like how we want to love others, we must know that allowing them to love us is also a form of us loving them. The worst thing you can do to your love ones is to reject them and yourself as they try to love you. Being unable to love is then as painful as not being loved. Let’s learn how to grieve and then let’s learn how to love even more.

I thank you my friend, for being a part of my life and for making me who I am today. I will forever remember you and the times we have spent together. Rest in peace and my heart is with you and your family.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.” Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross