Kathleen McGivney

A Tree Grows in Los Angeles

Roots, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

I've been going through a lot of film negatives lately, some new, some old. I used to shoot tons and tons of black & white film, and I miss it. Looking at some of these negatives has inspired me to pick up one of my old Leica SLRs and run a few rolls of b&w through it. Since I have a better scanner now (his name is Atom and he procrastinates much less than I do) I should be able to post more film shots soon.

This image is one of my favorites from my film archives. (Calling them "archives" rather than "piles of old negatives" makes it sound fancy and organized.) I took it while walking around the grounds of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church near downtown Los Angeles. A friend of mine and I were out shooting just to see what caught our eye. As we were walking around the grounds, I saw this knotty old tree behind the church near the rectory, with its bulging roots displacing parts of the nearby sidewalk. I thought it was an interesting subject and I liked the way the light was hitting in only in certain places because it was streaming through the branches of another nearby tree, so I captured the image.

If I recall correctly, I was using fairly high-speed black & white film, not because I was working with low light but because I like the large grain in higher-speed films. Sometimes a grainy look can impart a certain aesthetic to a photograph that I find appealing. For example, another image that I shot during this outing is of a side of a building and some trees and landscaping next to it; the grain in the image makes it look as though it was taken 80 years ago rather than with a modern camera. It gives it an artistic, somewhat painterly quality that I really like in a photograph.

More scanned negatives coming soon, as soon as my scanner gets home from work!

Statue of Liberty

Statue of Liberty, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

During our recent visits to Los Angeles to clean out the stuff from my old place, I found an old desktop computer that I hadn't booted up since early 2006 or so. On it were some scans of some negatives I shot a few years ago, when I was primarily shooting film. I still shoot with film cameras, though not nearly as much as I used to since digital is more convenient for me on my frequent travels. However, I do love using film and looking at old images I've created help me remember just how much.

This image of the New York New York Casino was shot in 2003 in Las Vegas with a Holga. Holgas are medium-format, cheap plastic cameras with plastic lenses that yield images with soft focus, vignetting, and light leaks. They're really fun for creating artistic, sometimes weird images.

The image was scanned as a negative so it looks backwards, but I didn't bother reversing it. I think it looks a little more surreal this way.