Israel in Lines, by Austin

The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem

In some ways, being a grad student can be unrewarding.  We commonly spend months at a time obsessing over random research ideas with only the hope that our work will someday get published and marginally advance the state of the art of an esoteric sub-field that a vast majority of people neither know, nor likely care, anything about.  Usually, we get paid little or nothing to do this.  However, there are definitely some perks to the job.  For one, you get to work on what you love.  That's pretty important, obviously.  But another thing that really gives grad students the jollies are conferences.  Many fields have annual conferences in a variety of locales scattered across the country or even the globe.  Beloved by grad students, conferences give us poor souls an excuse to travel to exotic (or sometimes not so exotic) lands in the name of furthering academia.  If you're lucky, your advisor or department might even foot the bill.  It's a nice respite from the otherwise endless work.

Filmzblog Might Not Only Be About Film

Photo by evanistan, Afghanistan, 2010

For those of you who don't already know this, Austin, Zach and I are total nerds. I realize that many are laying claim to the nerd label these days (no one wants to be called a hipster for instance, so I'll go ahead and come clean and tell you that we are at least hipster-light, even though Zach will probably hate me for this), and the term 'nerd' can mean many different things. For instance, when I think of a music nerd I will simultaneously think: snob. So, I want to get something clear once and for all: 

We Are Not Snobs   

Litograph #2: If on a winter's night a traveler, by Italo Calvino

Reading a book about reading a book about...  from If on a winter's night a traveler, by Italo Calvino.

...Adjust the light so you won't strain your eyes.  Do it now, because once you're absorbed in the reading there will be no budging you.  Make sure the page isn't in shadow, a clotting of black letters on a gray background, uniform as a pack of mice; but be careful that the light cast on it isn't too strong, doesn't glare on the cruel white of the paper, gnawing at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday.  Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading.  Cigarettes within reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray.  Anything else?  Do you have to pee?  All right, you know best.

Disposable Day Take Two: A Normal Day, by Zach

Thursday, October 14th. So with the first week of Filmzblog under our belts, it's time for the second installment of Disposable Day. I decided to document a rather normal day filled with routines and a few unexpected social gatherings.

The Ghost of Filmz Past

(hmm, i wonder what happens if you click on the images?)

Every spring, the University of Texas holds a big campus-wide event called Forty Acres Fest. It's intended to get people from UT and the community together to play games and learn about diversity. Or something. I don't know; I've only been once, and I went to the kids' section. They had a bouncy house. It was awesome.

Disposable Day Volume 1: A Wedding Day, by Lauren

This is the first post from our Disposable Day series that we will be featuring every Monday. As you read this, disposable cameras are making their way to fantastic folk all across the states, and a few Austinites of note are already in possession of their little cameras. I could seriously not be more excited about the line up of awesomeness that we already have in store for ya'll. We welcome your participation so if you're interested you should check out the Disposable Day  prompt. In the meantime I figured that I ought to give our prompt a little test drive. Here are the results:  

About Filmzblog: Why Film?

Hello! Welcome to filmzblog, a blog devoted to still film photography. Here we hope to explore all things film, be it through our own work, community projects, and the work of our fellow film shooters. Filmzblog was conceived one fine Spring evening in 2010 by Austin, Lauren, and Zach. We hope that you will join us in our reveries.

The Folk Behind Filmzblog

                                                         

Austin

I love photography, but by trade I'm really a computer scientist.  That means I spend most of my day drinking coffee, making statistical models, and typing into black boxes on computer screens.  And, believe it or not, I really love that sort of thing.  But I gotta give some love to my right brain as well -- and for me, that love comes in the form of photography.  

Most of my recent photography has been digital -- I maintain a blog of my cameraphone photos, as well as a sparser collection of dSLR photos -- but I'm looking forward to filmzblog as inspiration to put more time into film.  I hope, by seeing all of our online geek-outs about film photography, you are similarly inspired.

Zach

I was enticed by film photography during my youth but primarily through taking a photojournalism class in college. I was one of the only students who turned in their work shooting film not just because I loved the quality, but because I was a relatively poor student who couldn't afford the more expensive digital SLRs.


Upon graduating from the University of Texas, I began shooting weddings with Lauren, which led me to becoming a wedding photographer myself. I began shooting thousands of photographs digitally for the first time. I couldn't believe that the ISO could be changed at any given time. Shooting digitally has produced incredible results and made me a better photographer overall. 

The idea of a blog about film is exciting for me because I get to go back to the basics - using the old film cameras I have collected, taking my time behind the lens, and sorting through negatives strips for the photographs ready to be viewed by others.