 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. Nori and I went to the river today. I was hoping the water would be a little lower. It wasn't going to be any lower this year, so I decided to make a photo anyway. Nori loves it when we go out into nature. Down by the river, she was able to get off lesion, and explore a little bit. I think she had a good time. The weather had been pretty rainy, but we were able to get a brief break of somewhat dry weather, just enough to make a few photographs. I put a roll of film in my Nikon N80. It's the first roll of film I've shot since completing my summer zine project. I thought I'd take a break from film and try to dial in my digital black and white, just in case I need to fall back on using my digital camera sometime in the future. It felt good to be shooting film again, so I set up a shot on this running water, running over the rocks. It wasn't anything special, but it was a good first frame. After I made a photo of flowing water over the rocks, I found a grass patch that reminded me of flowing water. Along the trail, I made a photo of a big maple leaf that was caught by a small bush. It was suspended above the forest floor. I don't know why, but it just seemed like it needed to be photographed. It was quiet in the woods today, just what my soul and mind needed. Not today. A couple weeks ago, I said this presentation format was kind of like a journal, a video journal. Well, it is. And it's also a written journal. I've started writing a journal on the days that I take my camera out. You'll see some of those journal posts show up from time to time. There are times when I just don't feel like saying anything. There are times where I just want to be in nature. I want to be quiet. I want to be still. And I want to make photographs. I don't normally take a tripod on our walks, but today I wanted to use my film camera. And it has a roll of delta 100 in it. Not really a hand-holdable film speed for the area that we're walking in. Lights usually pretty low in here. So we're bringing it along. We've got a couple prime lenses in my old Domke camera bag. I dug that out from my journalism days. It's classic. We're straight for a walk-around camera bag. This thing has seen many miles, many assignments. The weather has been hammering us this week. I haven't had a chance to get out much with my camera. The first morning we've had breaking the weather. I figured we'd take advantage of it. I'm attracted to the way these leaves are hanging off the limb, kind of repeating shapes. Just kind of caught my attention. And once again, I'm attracted to the contrast of the light-colored leaves. A little bit darker background. I think that makes them stand out. I'm using an 85mm. I'm shooting about anywhere from f2.8 to f5.6. I'm trying to shoot fairly parallel to the leaves, as much parallel as I can just to maximize my depth of field so I can try to get each leaf somewhat sharp while keeping the background fairly soft. So we'll see. We're kind of dragging the shutter a little more than I probably should be, but that's what you've got to do to make the shot work on this one. This is one of those Hell Mary passes. I like the way the ferns are in this log in different directions. And then down the center, there's no ferns. For some reason, that strikes me as an interesting composition. We'll see when we get this one developed. It's a little different. These ferns look like they're fairly fresh, fairly new. These Domke bags were what the pros used back in the day. You couldn't call yourself a pro photographer if you weren't carrying a Domke canvas photography bag. They worked pretty good for their intended purpose. Easy access. That was back when cameras were fairly small, at least the ones I used. Once I went into the Nikon D1, D2, that type of thing, those were so big and bulky that we just started carrying those on our shoulders and put the bag away. I was surprised to see the same exact leaf that I photographed like a week ago. At least a week ago. It's still here and it hasn't decomposed enough to be gone. I shot that with a digital camera. Different lighting. I thought I'd go ahead and make a couple frames with the film. We'll shoot it macro style. I've got an extension tube on here. It's all about the veins and the leaf. I think it has the potential of being a pretty cool shot. It looked good and digital. I like on this film. See how the film rendered it. The veins are pretty light. There might be a nice contrast between the veins of the leaf and the body part of the leaf. The wind is picking up. Everything I want in the photograph is moving around. It's just a little bit too much. I still got quite a few frames on this roll. I really don't want to throw it away. We'll just keep working on it. When the roll is down, we'll have a video, I think. At least one more day out. I'm out in a nature reserve. It's mostly grassland. I'm just trying to get a few shots of some grass with a little frost or dew on them. It's not that far from where I live. I haven't been out here in probably a couple of years. The frost was a little thicker, but the sun just popped out. It's almost all melted. Just above freezing. I'm going to try to make a couple more shots before it's all gone. There's a breeze that's also making it kind of a challenge. I just made a photo of a seed head that might be kind of nice. Shallow depth of field. We'll see. The frost was little to gone in like five minutes. I actually have never seen it that happened before. I guess the sun popped out just enough to wipe most of it out. It must have been right on the tipping point of melting because when I first got here it was like covered in frost. And I hardly got to make a few frames and it was gone. I'm sure where my rubber boots it's really, really boggy. All waterproof. The boots I'm wearing are, but I think I'm testing the limit right now walking through quite a bit of water. I really do like a lot of these grasses. I'm just not seeing anything right now that is making me want to photograph them. And it could be just the flat light or the atmosphere of weather. I think I'm going to be bringing this video to a close this week. Kind of stretch it out further than I would like to. What do I see in the images from this one roll of 35mm black and white film? I see images that require the viewer to linger. I see the rhythm in the chaos. Grass that flows like water if you use your imagination. A leaf held above the forest floor by spindly branches and tiny leaves leaving highlights throughout the frame. There are dark moody images reflecting the weather and decomposition contrasted by the end of the roll with light frosty airy images but not much more than atmosphere to validate its existence. And all this is on one roll of 35mm black and white film. Shooting a roll of film is a journey. Whether the images hit the mark or not it's always a journey worth taking. So until next time things are coming along for the ride.