Why film photographers need two cameras

Not every roll works out. This is roll 2 of 7 from my San Francisco trip. Not an ideal film stock loaded on the camera. Having a secondary camera with a daylight film would be perfect.

I loaded CineStill 800T on Tuesday night with one goal: capture the neon signs I’d been spotting around San Francisco during the day. Red glowing letters calling out from dark street corners. Light that makes you want to shoot at night.

Found this one first. That vertical glow cutting through the darkness.

Then this beauty. Perfect neon, perfect angle.

But after two frames, I stopped. The streets felt different at night. Uncomfortable with lots of drug users and crackheads. I went back to the hotel and saved the rest of the roll for morning.

San Francisco looks like a Cyberpunk distopia at night, with autonomous cars driving left and right, and confusion everywhere with the fentanyl crisis, something I tried to ignore, but it was impossible (and dangerous).

I loaded a night film thinking I was going to have lots of night shots, but I just took two useful ones, scared by the situation, so I returned to my hotel and aborted the night photographic mission.

The day after

Wednesday started early with a visit to the Golden Gate Park before the crowds. The light was soft, the air was cool, and since I still had the 800T loaded, I got the completely wrong film for the scene. Tungsten-balanced stock under daylight skies creates this strange color shift. Everything leans teal and green. At least I could take this nice shot inside a coffee shop (tungsten light…).

Flywheel Coffee Roasters. Empty tables, morning quiet. Machine maintenance station.

But then, the photos look like a green shitshow.

Golden Gate park. The day was not that ugly, but still…

The park had this memorial bench. The inscription stopped me: “In service of a more just world.” Simple. Direct. Surrounded by that weird teal grass the film was giving me.

Found these rusted pipes chained up like sculpture. Objects you walk past until you’re shooting film and suddenly everything becomes a frame.

Old fire alarm box covered in rust. Still standing. Still waiting. This looks like an old military equipment (like an alarm/siren) from WW2. God knows what this is, it was at the Park.

That's something I kinda like when photographing with film. You have to work with what you have, I wrote this in a post some months ago, where I narrate the story of the day I met a cow and I was with the right film. Although I hadn’t had the same luck in the Golden Gate Park, the reflection still worths it, because these rusty equipment kinda looked nice!

Read the post here:

The Paradox of Choice in Photography: Why Less is More

My friend Juan was with me that morning. Caught him sprawled across a park bench (that was posed, obviously, lol).

Thanks for the photowalk, Juan!

And that's it! Not many more things to report from this photo roll. Not every roll is a good photo roll. Some of them sometimes aren't the best fit for the light, which was the case here.

Roll 3 (coming next) is better! I took a photo from the Golden Gate Bridge with the current film stock right before changing to the 400D one, and you will see the same photo with them, side-by-side, the difference is shocking!