Why Film, Really, Why Kenneth?

I always carry a Nikon DSLR and a 28mm f1.8 lens with me in case I come across a story for my Roy Stryker photo project. And I have a few lenses in in my car, the most useful is a 70-300mm f4-5.6 Nikkor Zoom that is slow, cheap ($75) and small, yet sharp as...

Selfies are Easy. Real Life is Hard.

A friend recently showed me his cousin's family photo book, printed at Blurb or Shutterfly or one of those on-demand online photo printing services. It was nicely printed, and big, about 15x15", so it featured a lot of pictures. He asked if it was made up of photos from a pro, and I looked through...

What’s So Good About Art? To Create. To Make What Wasn’t There Before.

It's Saturday night and I'm watching people dance to a band at Bootstrap Brewing, the pub where I write my blog posts. I love writing here with a cold Lush Puppy IPA. Tonight, it's so much fun to see folks enjoying themselves dancing up a storm. I even photographed them and may use them in...

A 4×6 Brag Book – It’s a Thing!

My partner MaryLee went to Cincinnati for her niece's wedding and took along a small Olympus XA2 35mm film camera loaded with a single roll of Ilford HP5+ Black and White Film. Good setup if you have decent light--the camera sports a 35mm f3.5 lens. She photographed some of the behind-the-scenes that she had access...

We Have Choices Today. I Choose the Analog. The Tangible.

Like vinyl records versus digital CDs. Tube versus solid-state guitar amplifiers. Home-cooked meals versus microwaved. Hand-written (or typed) greeting cards versus emails. Film versus digital photography. Traditional photographic prints versus NFTs. I'm in the tangible art business!~Kenneth Wajda I make film portraits using 20th-century techniques and cameras and print in a traditional darkroom. For those...

“Waiting and Wondering”

Here's a phrase I heard a photographer use lately when speaking about why he likes digital photography over film: "It's better than waiting and wondering if the photo will come out." Here's another of mine: "Wait, what?" I was on assignment back in my newspaper days photographing a CEO and after I finished the shoot,...

“Digital is Much More Convenient.”

I see those words written a lot and they are often heard when I mention I shoot film photographs. To which I want to say, "Who said convenient art was the best art?" Another one is, "It's so expensive photographing on film, I don't see how you do it," while they're carrying the latest Sony...

Nobody Photographs Like Me

I make photographs that are uniquely my own. The kind of photographs are not like what you typically see on Instagram or Facebook. Editors have even said that my photos look different than most photos--there's an authenticity to them. They look real. There's an emotional quality to them. I'll take that, that is exactly what...

A Leica M3 in My Pocket, A Couple Rolls of Film, Some Gas in My Car, I’m Good to Go!

I am having a new love affair with my Leica M3. I've always liked it but being a bespectacled photographer, I've fought to see the whole viewfinder frame without pressing my glasses to the viewfinder and scratching them up. I like using a rangefinder, I'm good and fast at it, but if I'm moving my...

Slide Film: Creating Slide Shows in 2021

I rarely use color film because I prefer photographing with black and white film and Ilford HP5+ is my black and white film of choice. I do love the look of Kodak Ektar and Portra for color films, but I just don't reach for them much. This week I was reading about work made made...