Nick Christian MacDonald "Man on the Moon" - Super 8 + 16mm

Last year I was given an old Russian 16mm camera called the Krasnogorsk-3 (or K-3 if you don’t want to say that mouthful) from Steve Cossman of the Brooklyn cinema arts non-profit, Mono No Aware. And what better way to test a new camera than to create a music video with your folk-singing neighbor?

My neighbor and friend, Nick Christian MacDonald, is an Americana-Folk musician with a hint of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits. Check out his music on Spotify and catch him this Saturday at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg! He’s a great dude and I figured it’d be fun to create some art together. So our wives did some quick concepting and ended up tossing Nick in a custom suit I got during my honeymoon in Vietnam which fit him like it was his and we shot in a little set inside my apartment and around our neighborhood in Brooklyn. The images are from a previous photoshoot with Nick.

The actual music video is a mixture of 16mm FomaPan 100R and some expired Kodak Tri-X Super 8 film I got from an old NYC photographer that I shot in my Canon 814XL-S. Steve of Mono No Aware helped me hand-process both rolls at the Gowanus Community Darkroom in Brooklyn and they came out great. Lots of texture and grain but I love that. It’s film!

So I mentioned that earlier last year, my wife and I did a photoshoot with Nick around our neighborhood on Polaroids and 35mm film. The cameras I used were my Polaroid 110B with modded CB-70 back, a Canon AE-1P and a Nikon S2. Nick’s a good lookin dude so it was easy enough to catch his good side.

Also I recently released a music video I shot with the K-3 and Pekky Savan so check that one out as well! Definitely going to be creating more music videos in the future!

Leaving you with some of my favorite stills from the raw scans from the 16mm and Super 8 rolls.

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Crew

Music: Nick Christian MacDonald

Cinematographer: Nick Collingwood

Design/Direction: Halla Creative & Tyler MacDonald

Processing: Mono No Aware

2K Scans: Gamma Ray Digital

Upstate NY Hike with Mono No Aware // 16mm + Polaroids + 110

I obviously shoot a ton of Super 8 film as anyone who's ever visited my website or Instagram can see. So it was a real treat to find out last spring that while I was at a Mono No Aware fundraiser, that I won the raffle for a Mono No Aware workshop where a group of people would take a van loaded with cameras, film and snacks upstate to Hudson, NY and Kaaterskill Falls to shoot some 16mm! My first time!

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Our first destination was the Olana State Historic Site along the Hudson River, home of Frederic Edwin Church, who was a landscape painter from the Hudson River School. There we had a brief chat with our guide and filmmaker, Fern Silva, and Steve Cossman (founder of Mono No Aware) about the history of the area both in painting as well as 16mm film. Peter Hutton was a filmmaker that shot many serene landscapes of the Hudson Valley and American cities on 16mm film and lived in the area until his passing in 2016. And so, inspired by those who came before us, we set out to create our own portraits of the landscape. We left the historic set and went over to Kaaterskill Falls to start our hike.

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We were provided Bolex H16 REX5 16mm cameras, courtesy of Mono No Aware, to use and some Kodak Vision3 50D color negative film. Given the bright sunny day and gorgeous springtime colors, it was a perfect match. I also brought along my Minolta Instant Pro, which is a Polaroid Spectra camera, and a Pentax Auto 110, which I found fitting as it's a 110 camera which is actually just 16mm film cut down for still cameras. Unfortunately, that camera has some winding issues aaaand I may have dropped it at one point on the hike so the photos are cropped a little funny. But so it goes...

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We hiked around with our fairly heavy Bolex's, chatted a bunch, saw some waterfalls and very cool landscapes and ate delicious food Steve had prepared. Overall, a great way to spend a day. I just received a “K-3” Krasnogorsk-3 16mm camera and I'm now very eager to shoot more of the format. I already shot a some test rolls and a little music video with it a few weeks ago. And just shot another music video this weekend! So lots to look forward to including Kodak re-releasing Ektachrome in 16mm!

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Jazz Age Lawn Party 2018 // Super 8 + Polaroids + 120

Michael Arenella's Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governor's Island in NYC every summer is such a fantastic time. People dressed to the nine's in 1920's outfits (some authentic!), great jazz, old cameras... it's a great combo. So getting to help out the Penumbra Foundation shoot tintypes at the event and capture it all on Super 8, Polaroids and 120 is a swell time for sure. Take a gander at the Super 8 I shot below!

This was the 4th year I've attended the event and the third time helping the Penumbra Foundation's Tintype Studio out at the event. (You can see my previous Super 8 and film photos for 2017, 2016 & 2015) Penumbra shoots actual tintypes on location at the event using 4x5 or 5x7 cameras and people can walk out of the event with a tintype in hand. People are always quite surprised that the format is still around similar to their reaction to me shooting Polaroids and Super 8. Some of the Penumbra crew like to call tintypes the 19th century "Polaroid" as it takes merely a few minutes for the finished photo to be seen.

The last few years, I've helped them out and documented both the event and their booth on Super 8 using a Nizo 801 Macro camera and some Kodak Tri-X film. Never one to travel light on cameras, I also like to bring along other cameras since portrait worthy people are plentiful so I brought my Polaroid 110B with my Instax Wide back and peelapart back with some expired Polaroid 664 film which had mixed results. Also brought my Polaroid 680SLR and then a Mamiya 7 I borrowed from a friend for the weekend to try out since I've never really shot 120 film. Needless to say from the results below but that camera is sharp! Combined with some expired Tri-X and some Fujifilm Pro 400H film in there, it really shined.

This year I opted to process the Super 8 film I shot myself with some help from Steve Cossman of Mono No Aware (which is a great cinema arts non-profit based in NYC which teaches tons of workshops on filmmaking on actual film). I used an old Russian processing tank called a Lomo tank which is similar to Patterson tanks for still photography. I was nervous but the processing went great and you can see from the results above the Super 8 came out well. Eager to process more film now! 

I'll be missing out on the festivities this weekend but I'm sure I'll be back in 2019! Many thanks to the Penumbra Foundation for the opportunity! And I'll leave you with a few shots of my Penumbra buds for the weekend.