This week’s Member Moment features work by Film Club member Michal Novak, who experiments with film photography and development processes. Scroll down to see her pictures and to read the interview!
PL: What got you interested in photography?
MN: The low barrier to entry. I grew up painting and playing music, but photography doesn’t require the clean up that painting does, and isn’t sonically disruptive in the way that a cello in a small home is. Bringing a camera everywhere I go and turning it on is easy.
PL: What type of camera do you shoot with?
PL: When taking pictures, what are some objects or elements or feelings within a scene that inspire you to take a photo?
MN: Bright light & straight lines. My favorite pictures are ones I’ve taken of buildings at funky angles on bright days. I also enjoy pictures of things in places where they don’t belong, so a lot of litter and garbage and mess makes its way onto my rolls, too. Lastly, cats - especially my own.
PL: Of the pictures you submitted, can you share an interesting story about one?
MN: I almost exclusively submitted pictures I developed, but the picture of two buildings was developed at PhotoLounge. For whatever reason, the scans were somewhat distorted and I was absolutely floored by the beauty of this unique effect. Even though I know it was unintentional, I became obsessed with messing with the development process to experience this feeling of awe, which is how I got into experimental development.
PL: What do you enjoy most about digital/film photography and what is challenging about it?
MN: My favorite part of film photography is the development process. I develop most of my work using caffenol. I’m intentionally careless because many of my pictures, on their own, do not interest me. For me, the magic comes down to the scratches on the emulsion & the tints & fades that come from the physical development. I experiment with tweaking recipes, development times, temperature, souping, rubbing emulsion off, and so on. I have negatives here that I intentionally did not rinse in order to leave fixer chemistry on the roll because I liked the effect it added.
The biggest challenge is finding subject matter to photograph. Because the development process is where I feel the most creative, I often just want to have a roll of negatives without wanting to put the work into shooting.
PL: How would you like to grow this collection of photographs?
MN: I am super inspired by Kyle Mosman’s Click Lab presentation on night photography. I hope it makes sense to say this: there is so much light in the world even when it is really dark out. My plan in the coming weeks is to experiment with high speed film at night. I’m looking forward to pushing Ilford HP5 to 3200 and getting some really grainy, gritty images. I also want to try more development processes outside of caffenol and see what other things I can throw in the pot to develop negatives.
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