LIFE, PROJECTS AND LIFE, PROJECTS AND

Thank Yous and Credits

Our wedding week was incredible and it wouldn't have been possible without the help of our friends, family and some wonderful vendors. One of the joys of wedding planning was being able to hire many of our talented friends and acquaintances. We wanted to forever thank you all for your effort and love in making our dream day come true. Everything was perfect and we wish that we could re-live that whole weekend. 

 

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A Film Developing Workshop

 
 

April 12th, 2016

I want to write about this day and post photos from it so I don't forget. Already too much time has passed since then. 

I've always had a little bit of curiosity when it comes to photography, but because of so many people around me that seem to be professional photographers, I never indulged in it to much. So it has taken me many years to realize that more of my curiosity has to do with the mechanics of photography, how it works, rather than the art of photo-taking, for instance. I have an old SLR film camera that I use every once in a while, and it's fascinating to me how it runs purely on mechanics...all gears and springs and levers, no batteries. (Well, except for a tiny one that runs the light meter, but that isn't necessary to take a photo.) I love learning about how light enters it and the mirrors inside push the image onto your eye, and then also onto film. I'm sure digital cameras are actually more complicated than film, but maybe they are so beyond me that they don't interest me. I like keeping it simple. 

So when Dorothy told me about her friend Meghan's film workshop that she signed us up for, I was thrilled. Film development was a part of the whole process that I actually had no idea how it worked. I always brought my film to a lab and had them develop it for me, and always wondered what had to happen in the back room before I received my photos on a disc. I would get to do this myself? Rad. 

We went to Meghan's studio and we (and the other peeps who signed up for her workshop) each had our roll of film that we had respectively shot in the weeks prior. These personal rolls of film would be our guinea pigs, our own entry gate into the world of darkrooms and chemicals, and making memories come alive again. I was excited and asked a lot of questions. Meghan was great, by the way. She knows her stuff, and was patient and even a bit happy that I was asking so many questions. 

I'll try to keep this long story short. We were all in the last stage of developing and Meghan told us we could take a little peek at our photos if we wanted. I didn't. I was pretty smug, and wanted to be surprised and amazed at the final product of my roll. I remembered different moments that I had captured, and was really looking forward to see how so many of these shots turned out. I unrolled my roll of film......and it was completely blank. Not full of black frames, or white frames, or any kind of frame. It was just a black. strip. of. nothing. 

I wanted to cry. I was mostly so sad about the things I thought I had captured being lost, and also a little embarrassed. I didn't know what to do or say for a moment. I opened up my camera and released the shutter with the back open to see if there was a mechanical failure. There wasn't. I just don't think I loaded the film completely right and it slipped out and nothing ever made it on. I felt like such a n00b. 

Meghan saw so quickly and clearly how disappointed I was, and jumped in right away to do mend the situation. She told me to load the roll of film that was given to me at the beginning of the workshop, and she said I could shoot around her studio, and when I finished the roll, she would stay with us and go through the whole developing process again, just so I could walk away with some photos. It was such a sweet and selfless thing for her to do, and what was even sweeter was how she ended up taking some portraits of Dorothy and I on the fire escape outside her studio. And I do have to say....they are some pretty great photos. Meghan, THANK YOU. I won't forget this day, and I promise we will come back once wedding planning craziness gets done!

Here are some of my favorite shots. (And a couple from Dorothy's roll.)

-A

 

See Meghan's work here. You can sign up for her Intro to Shooting Film class here or her Intro to Developing Film here. 

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PROJECTS AND PROJECTS AND

Our Bonhoeffer Print

If you know me at all, I am a giver! I love gift-giving! Receiving is fun too, but nothing brings me as much joy as the look I get from my loved ones when I nail it when it comes to gift-giving... so you can imagine the agony (okay, I'm definitely exaggerating here but the word is close enough to my feelings) I go through every year when Christmas comes around. If I had it my way, I would get a meaningful gift for everyone I love... but such is life, this is not realistic. Aaron and I have much saving to do when it comes to our goals so we came up with an alternative idea: we would make gifts! 

I read Life Together early on in my time at SPU and it really struck a chord with me. It's one of the few books I actually enjoyed reading in college so I kept it. Awhile ago, I took it out again to re-read it with Aaron because at that time, we were trying to figure out what community meant, especially in regards to living out our faith. This little book has so much wisdom-- anyway, we pulled out one of our favorite quotes from the book and decided to make an art print to give to our closest friends. 

“Only where hands are not too good for deeds of love and mercy in everyday helpfulness can the mouth joyfully and convincingly proclaim the message of God’s love and mercy.”

Of course, when it came to actually implementing the idea as far as time and energy went, it took us awhile to get started. There were actually moments when I wanted to give up on the idea, because we had no time and because I'm a perfectionist, I didn't think we could pull it off. However, I could tell Aaron was very keen on the idea; I knew it made him giddy. One evening he pulled out a few branches and leaves he had noticed in his front "yard" and that was the jumpstart we needed to get the project rolling.

Aaron laid out his findings on his desk and sent me this picture: 

 
 

From there, he did a sketch with pencil and outlined in pen:

I placed these pictures in Adobe Illustrator and made them vector images and started shifting some things around. Below is some work in progress:

After some drafts, here was our finished print! 

 
 

We wrote a little note to give to our friends, printed these bad boys out, packaged them in nice cellophane bags (because that always makes things legit), and packaged them up with some good ol' kraft wrapping paper. To make things a little bit more fun, I made prints of Aaron's film photos he had taken over the last few years to add a little more personalization to the whole thing and calligraphed name tags.

 

We had a lot of fun doing this together and our friends were so surprised and thankful. I'm already curious as to what we'll be making next year for our friends! 

If you'd like to get a copy of this print, head on over to our shop and purchase a downloadable print for $10.00. The proceeds from this project will go directly to Arise and Shine Uganda, a babies' home where I volunteered for a few months in 2013 and 2015. Contact us if you have any questions about this effort!

 

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