 Every time I load a new roll of film, I hope to find the special moments. The dramatic light. The unique. But the reality is, I'm more likely to find the ordinary. All I can do is try to make the best of what's in front of me. All I can do is embrace the ordinary. My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. But with bills to pay and a family to feed, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. Come along as I follow my passion trying to create art that shows the essence of nature in a photograph. I'll be sharing my successes and my failures in hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is right in the edge. I'm hoping this 24mm will be good enough to be my only wide-angle lens. Because that's my plan. I'm going to be using this 24mm 2.8mm as my only wide-angle lens for a while. I really want to simplify my lineup when I do my film photography. So I'm hoping this will work. I'm confident it will. I used to use a 24mm quite a bit when I was a journalist. It's really my first main lens. So I'm confident that this 24mm will work. I just haven't used this focal length as a prime lens for a long time. I'm wanting to ingrain the perspective of my head just a little bit. I've gotten rid of my 20mm and my 28mm. I've picked 24mm to be right in the middle. This will work for pretty much everything I use those lenses for. I'm having a hard time wanting to make this photograph because it's not very good. There's not a lot of foreground information that's interesting. The sky is just so flat right now. We had some texture in the sky. I might be more inclined to waste this shot. I hate wasting film. So I don't think I'm going to waste a shot on this location. I've made better shots here. I was kind of hoping it would be a little bit better out here. If it was the sky, it had a little more texture. Even if I put a filter on, there's just not enough there to bring out. So I think we're just going to have the one shot from the bridge. I'm not going to waste a whole lot of film here. I really like the texture of this log because it's a nice side light. It casts a little bit of shadow. It's a little diffused, but it's enough direction to give some nice texture to the log. My filter is too big. Now that I've finalized all my lenses, which are most of them are now are 52mm. This 77mm filter is kind of a pain in the butt. So what I'll probably have to do is just get another set to match my 52mm lenses. I made a couple exposures. I took the first one with the multi-segment matrix metering. Then I also did one with the stopover expose. Just because I think the highlights might be trying to fool the meter. I really don't anticipate this being a great shot, but I don't know. There's something about the balance of it that I'm finding attractive. So it's worth a couple frames. I'm out on this wet soggy morning, a little bit dusting as snow. I am attracted to this repeated, these repeating shapes here. These hanging, these seeds, the water dripping from them, they're wet. This might actually work pretty good for a project I'm working on. If I can find a way to get them to stand out a little bit, I may have to shoot a little bit shallow depth of field. We've got more over here. If I can just find a way to isolate them against maybe a darker background or something, we might be able to get something. I've been working on this reel of film for much too long. There's a part of me that thinks I'm just photographing anything now just to get through this roll so I can get it developed. I don't even know what's on this roll anymore. I've been working on this roll for probably a month and a half, almost two months. I just want to start something else. I want to start a new project. I'm not sure I normally photograph something like this, but I'm attracted to this clump of grass and how the roots are exposed. The roots do stand out against the mud, so it might be more than me just trying to get through the frames. What I failed to do today was grab my 50mm. I thought I had it in my bag. Now that I look, all I've got with me today is a 24mm and a 135mm. Kind of both ends of the spectrum. This kind of stuff I actually like to use a 50mm with. So I'm a little disappointed that I brought the wrong lens. But getting close to the wide angle lens might actually give a little bit more interesting look anyway. And I've noticed over here there's some driftwood that once again could be just wanting to get through the roll of film. But there might be another exposure over there. To finish this roll of Elford Delta 100 it seems fitting to return back to where I started it much too long ago. If I come away with a portfolio worthy image or images that just don't quite hit the mark, whether it takes a day, week or months, each roll of film takes me on a journey that's worth taking. So until next time, thanks for coming along for the ride.