Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
It’s been over a year since Kodak announced that it is bringing Ektachrome film back to the market. And now it’s finally happening: Kodak Ektachrome will soon start shipping to distributors worldwide. Very soon, all you film enthusiasts will be able to buy a roll or five of Ektachrome35mm and shoot away!
Last year, Netflix announced that it had acquired the rights to the Ed Harris flick, Kodachrome. It details the journey of a man and his son racing to develop several rediscovered rolls of Kodachrome film before the last lab capable of doing it shuts down. Looking at the trailer, Ed Harris’ character is his usual cantankerous old self. A bit like the one he plays in Westworld, with a little Grumpy Old Men thrown in for good pleasure.
Netflix has acquired the photography themed drama, Kodachrome in a deal worth $4 million. Starring Ed Harris, Jason Sudeikis and Elizabeth Olsen, it’s set during the final days of Kodachrome’s processing availability.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday at the Princess of Wales Theatre. It follows a father-son road trip to reach a Kansas photo lab before its doors close for good. If they don’t get there in time, then it’s never going to happen (in theory).
Film photographers all over the world had high hopes for the comeback of Kodachrome. However, it appears we’ll have to wait for it. Probably for a long, long time. The problems with film processing haven’t been resolved, so it may be unlikely for this iconic film to reach the users again.
The film so famous that Paul Simon wrote a song about it may be coming back. Kodak’s Kodachrome was the choice of both hobbyist and professional photographers for years. It was first released in 1935, and production ran all the way until 2009. Despite digital already having taken a firm grasp on the world of photography, it upset many photographers who still shot both film and digital.
During a discussion at CES on The Kodakery podcast, they briefly mentioned the re-launch of Ektachrome, and the possibility of Kodachrome actually going back into production.
In the quick video clip below, professor Lorna Roth (of Concordia University in Montreal), covers the who, what, why, where, and when film and camera technology began making strides in an effort to more accurately capture and portray the wide variety of skin tones that make up the human race.
In the early days of color film, the color balance of the film’s processing chemicals were made with the primary consumer market in mind–which, at the time, was predominately light skinned individuals. “For many decades, chemicals that would bring out various reddish, yellow, and brown tones were largely left out,” explains the video’s narrator.[Read More…]
Rewind back to the 1970’s and Chilean born photographer, Camilo José Vergara, had just begun what would become one of the most extensive and important photography projects taken on by a single photographer. Armed with a 35mm camera and some Kodachrome 64, Vergara hit the inner city streets of 16 different cities across the United States and began documenting the evolution of the ghetto one photo at a time.
Over the course of the next 40+ years, Vergara would continue on his journey, revisiting many of the same locations he’d already documented year after year to photograph them again, in similar, if not exact, fashion. Vergara now has 10’s of thousands of photographs that, together, provide a visual history of decay and rebirth in America.[Read More…]
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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