January 10th, 2013- Ice & Bluffs

"As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened facing up the current.
         Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling.
         He turned and looked down the stream. It stretched away, pebbly-bottomed with shallows and big boulders and a deep pool as it curved away around the foot of a bluff."

-Ernest Hemingway, from  Big Two Hearted River: Part 1

Film- Roll #1

For most of this year, the only camera I've been using to record my wanderings is the one on my iPhone 4s. To its credit, it does a pretty good job for basic outdoor-related stuff. Eventually I plan on getting a nice dSLR with good HD video capabilities, but with a semester and a half of college courses left, that remains a future investment.
About a month ago, as I was instagramming a bright picture of a colorful brook trout and trying to find the most appropriate artificial filter to convey a "vintage look," I remembered my dad's old film camera.
He'd described his forays into photography multiple times during my childhood and I had always been a little intimated by the technical aspects of aperture, shutter speed, etc. to give it due attention. But recently, after owning multiple point and shoot cameras and wanting to learn more about photography itself, I became real excited about film photography.

So I asked my dad if I could borrow his old film camera, a 1978 Pentax k100, he was thrilled about my interest in it, and the following unaltered photos are the product of my first roll of film. All in all, I was pretty excited about the quality of some of the prints. And as you might expect, it does feel a little like time travel learning how to correctly load/unload film and adjusting the camera's purely mechanical settings to the appropriate values. Next time I make it home I'll ask my pops if he has any of those old prints from his younger days and post them on here as well.
All of the photos shown were taken in Western Wisconsin.

grouse hunting-opening day

9/15/12-photo credit Nate Wick

9/15/12-photo credit Nate Wick

mailbox

fly vise

My pal Bleu.

9/19/12

9/19/12