Free Film Project

The Free Film Project toured the country, lat August, handing out film as part of their Free Film: USA project. They handed out 100 rolls of black and white 35mm film in each of eighteen cities. They collected the rolls within a few days, before they moved on to the next cities. They had a darkroom in their Airstream trailer, and posted images from the road. For their USA project, the theme was Red, White & Blue.



Red, white & blue, on black and white film. This meant people had to be creative with the interpretation, rather than just taking pictures of red, white and blue things. It was taken to mean pictures of America, or this is my home. That was the clear theme throughout the series.



Our photo organization sponsored them in their Milwaukee stop, so I was kindof obligated to participate. I wanted to, of course, but I didn't have time that weekend. I had to shoot a few photos at a time, when I had a chance. I did a few in the city when I picked up the film. And a few at lunchtime the next day. And a few in the evening, and a couple more before work the morning the day I delivered the film.



This was the first time I'd shot film in many years. I was disappointed to learn that my newer lens is not backwards-compatible with my older camera. I ended up with vignetting on the images. Not just dimming in the corners, but a defined lens shadow. Most of them I was able to crop enough to remove it, and in some cases I thought it looked interesting. Not only that, some images showed a huge amount of fisheye distortion.



The whole project was a struggle. I had given Cindy one of my old cameras, and there were no images on her film. That was a disappointment, to say the least! We paid them a few bucks so they could mail our negatives to us. So Cindy ended up making that a donation.

They were posting people's photos on Instagram as they went, and will publish a book. They didn't choose any of my images, but I'll never know whether that was because they didn't like them, or if they did like them but the vignetting made them unpublishable. They were traveling the country with a modified Airstream trailer, with a darkroom, so they'd start showing images from each city about a week later.

I kept hoping they'd send the negatives so I could see my images. They kept promising they'd send them, but never did. Finally they said they'd scan my negs and send me the scans, but there were only eight full-sized image scans, out of the 36 shots. The rest were "contact sheet" scans of whole strips. I wonder when I'll get the physical negatives.

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What I did on my summer vacation, day 1

I've got the next two weeks off work - furloughed, no pay.

I didn't do a lot over the weekend, except gaming. My regular Sunday night group started a new Star Wars campaign. On Saturday I started a new D&D campaign for a friend and his family. I'd played before with him and his three teenagers, but he got his wife to join this time. So I spent a lot of time on that Friday night and Saturday morning, before the game in the afternoon.

Today, I did some miscellaneous yard work in the morning (which mostly included killing Japanese beetles). I planted new grass seed on the places I'd planted before. The one where the tree used to be had grass coming up, but I just added more seed. The one in the shade at the front of the house had hardly any grass coming up, so I tried it again. It's not a big deal, because grass will eventually fill in from the lawn, but it would be nice if there was some there, at least.

I staked up the aspen trees. Three of the five were leaning, and... loose. The ground is very wet, so they were kinda pivoting on their roots. I straightened them back up and packed a little dirt at their bases.

I cleaned out the stuff in the back hall. My dad gave me a birdhouse that he made, so I put that up. I put it on the side of the shed. It was either that or on a post, but I don't have a post-hole digger.

I spent a while working on photos. Finishing a few, posting some, and cleaning up my folders.

I also did some research on cleaning up a cast iron pan. I had a guy at work grind the bottom smooth. I'm thinking I want to take off all the seasoning and start over, so I looked up electrolysis. But since the pan is in pretty good shape, I think I might just use oven cleaner.

And I talked to a friend about helping me get a splitter. They're on wheels, so I'd need his trailer hitch. Either that, or putting one on our car, which is more expensive than having him help me. But I'm going to look that up anyway.
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