Week 92 — Great Sand Dunes in B&W

I bought a used Mamiya 7 II last week (thanks Bill!), which is a medium format film rangefinder camera. I’ve been wanting to get into film for over a year now, and I finally pulled the trigger. I’ll be doing lots of experimentation (and undoubtedly making lots of mistakes) in the coming months, but it may be a while before I post any of the results here. The process from shooting to sharing film images is much slower than for digital cameras, and this is one of the aspects of the process that attracts me. I’m at a point in my photography where I want to be more reflective about the process, what it is I’m trying to say with my images, etc. Shooting film will be a great opportunity to slow down and be more reflective.

I’ll probably be shooting quite a bit of black and white with the Mamiya, and to help me practice seeing the world in monochrome while the Mamiya is in the shop getting a tune-up, I’ll be shooting predominantly black and white images with my digital Fuji cameras. This week’s shot is taken from an excursion to the Great Sand Dunes National Park last fall. The dunes are incredible for photographers, and the color palette of the landscape really lends itself to black and white images with a red filter. The red filter had the effect of lightening objects that are red (e.g., the sand dunes) and darkening objects of color on the opposite side of the color wheel (e.g., the blue sky). This produces really pleasant contrast between the dunes and the rest of the landscape.