The project: To shoot 52 rolls of film in the course of one year


The idea for the project arose from reading several Picture a day -blogs. That and from my desire to improve my skills in several fields regarding photography;

  • shooting more pictures - lowering my threshold to shoot, and not care so much about what I shoot. This sounds a bit backwards, but I believe that shooting a lot, instead of shooting a little with an uptight attitude, is better.
  • shooting (technically) better pictures - learning to look at the picture I’m taking and adjusting the technical parameters accordingly to achieve what I’m striving for, and thus making better negatives which (eventually) leads to better prints.
  • processing film - the wet dark room enthusiast in me wants to improve! My current rate of work is simply not enough.
  • using all my equipment - the hamster in me has led me to surround myself in a lot of garbage classic photography equipment. You know, old cameras that most would frown upon or at the most use as a paper weight. Sadly, I mostly end up using my last acquisition the most.
  • getting more exercise - okay, this one might be a bit hypocritical, but none the less I’m hoping this will get me out more often and to places I haven’t yet visited in my nearest surroundings.
  • having fun - oh yes! Because fun is what photography really means to me.

If I in the process happen to capture some stunning (or pleasing, or even just nice) shots, even better.

So why the blog?

Heck, why not? The whole idea is to keep me engaged in something for a whole year. Without this outlet, I’m more likely to give in to my laziness and scrap the whole thing in a month or two. And besides, where’s the fun in shooting a lot of pics and then not showing them to anyone?

Why didn’t you stick to the Picture a Day -format?

Since I’m working with film, a picture a day isn’t really realistic. Well, at least not as long as I’m limiting my dark room time to one day per week. So the process will be shooting one film during the week, then processing and scanning it. Finally, the results will be published here one picture per day.

52 rolls? Really…

Well… the original target was to shoot 52 rolls of medium format 120-film. This kind of film only has 12 exposures per roll, which is very realistic for one week. (There’s no rule that limits me to just one roll per week, if I get my mojo running, but at least one roll is the minimum.) Later on when I decided to expand the project to include all of my equipment, which includes more 35mm cameras than not, the idea was slightly modified; when using 35mm film, the time span will be two weeks for shooting, but not for processing. I’m sure my first mid-film processing will be very interesting.

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