The Future’s Black And White. I shot film for a large part of my career and never wanted to change, I was a confirmed user of Ilford’s B&W products for news images. When shooting music and features I would take two cameras one would be loaded with HP4, yes 4, there was no 5 or 5 Plus then. The second would have Kodak Ektachrome and for live music both films would have to be push processed. I eventually went over to colour negative film, at the insistence of the newspapers for whom I was then working, notably The Evening Standard, Today and Mirror Group Newspapers. in 1999 I was the first photographer on Fleet Street to use a Nikon D1, having previously used digitals from Nikon, (the E2), Kodak, (DC620 and 680) and Fuji.
Digital made it easier, especially as I had beta tested the first digital mobile data system, which was offered by a network called One2one (now part of T-Mobile) and could send images within minutes to the papers. However at the time I didn’t get the satisfaction from digital that I got from film, and although digital cameras have improved out of all recognition, now able to do things, especially in low light that could only be dreamed of on film, somehow it still lacks something real and organic for me.
So here we go for a year at least I’m going back to the future and shooting projects in B&W on film. Projects lined up on the “Arcadian Thames” a project on working horses, one on blues musicians and I’m negotiating on on a motorsport theme. This looks like being a busy year. Huge thanks to Domke [1] for some new camera bags, I still have two I’m using that are over 25 years old, Nikon for the F6 [2] their last flagship film camera and Tom Willis of Art Audio [3] who gave me a Mamiya 645 AFD [4] to use on the project. Check back here to see how it’s going.
Paul Stewart, January 2016
This image is ©copyright Paul Stewart