Cool Pictures: Phoenix

Cool pictures—the only kind I know how to take.

That's right, I'm back to doing photography more regularly! I'm still in recovery but I'm walking around more and more these days, with off days to rest. On one of my busier days a couple weeks ago, I shot a roll of Phoenix 200, the first newly developed color film in essentially 1000 years. This is good because the only game in town (and by town I mean Earth) for color photo film is Kodak. Fuji maybe makes some rolls of not-Superia 400 still, but even they're mostly just re-rolling bulk Kodak Gold or whatever. Hopefully more competition will lead to lower prices, because shooting film should not be this expensive. Everything small should cost 1 dollar and everything large should cost 2 dollars—this is my foolproof economic plan to save the world, but that's for another blog post.

For now, I'm focused on getting back to doing what I love. And what a stellar new film to do it with! It's defnitely in an experimental state but I like shooting with expired rolls and my results turned out quite similar, so no complaints here. It's got a personality of its own, very punchy and grainy with high contrast. Kinda behaves like slide film with how narrow the exposure latitude is. It has a very cinematic look when it's behaving, with halation around bright areas similar to Cinestill stocks. It's honestly gorgeous even when I fuck up. I believe Ilford (sorry, Harman, because Ilford isn't legally allowed to make color film but Harman is just Ilford) will get better at color film and eventually release something a little more stable, something with the consistency of a Portra or whathaveyou. But I hope they keep this fucked up little gremlin around too.

Watch as I rise from the ashes (click through to see 'em in full):

Nicky Flowers - 10/18/24 - I hope this is a nice way of showing off my photography! I was tempted to start a separate photo blog but then I was like "why would I do that" (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)