The 36 - 2022

This post is also a bit of a weird one. As with the previous post, it’s a very reflective one. This one is one I’m titling, “The 36”. It’s a collection of pictures that I think represented this year for me. There’s at least one picture from each roll, even ones I didn’t like much. Mostly in putting this together, I wanted to answer the question, what did my photography look like in 2022?

The first question to answer is, why 36? 36 is the normally rated number of exposures on a roll of 35mm film. Yes, there are 24 exposure rolls, like Kodak Gold, but most 35mm rolls of film have 36 exposures, hence “The 36”.

The next question to answer is, why these pictures? First off, I wanted to represent every roll because even rolls I didn’t like overall had pictures I think should be mentioned and are important. After that, I wanted to make sure they covered a relatively representative range of the things I took pictures of. I could’ve easily taken 36 pictures of solely live music, but I did more and took pictures of more than that this year.

Obviously, I should note that I didn’t include any pictures I would label “bad” even though I took many of them. Ultimately, I want “The 36” to be a celebration of the pictures I took. While there is much to learn from the “bad” pictures, there’s also a lot to learn from these pictures, most or all of which I would label “good”. With that said, let’s get to describing “The 36” for 2022.

Due to how 36 pictures can be put into a rectangle without gaps, “The 36” for 2022 had 18 landscape and 18 portrait pictures. It’s possible, for example that in the future, they might all be landscape or all portrait for a given year. However, it was hard to get things to line up so I ended up with a half half split for 2022.

All told, I shot 13 rolls of film and included 2 pictures shot on instant film for 2022. The specific film stock I shot the most in 2022 was Lomography 800 which I shot 4 times in total. The rolls with the fewest pictures represented are the Portra 800 pushed +1 and the 2nd roll of Lomography 800 at one picture each. The rolls with the most pictures represented are the 1st roll of Lomography 800, Lomography Purple, and Portra 400 with 4 each.

I’ll talk about these 36 pictures in 3 groups. From left to right, you can split the collage into 3 sets of 12 pictures, each consisting of 6 landscape and 6 portrait pictures.

The first set I would classify as art and vibe. The second set I would classify as the city and nature. And the last set I would classify as live music.

In general, I arranged these sets by color and vibe with them also being somewhat roughly arranged by roll. The first set of 12 covers 3 pictures from Lomography Purple. It has 2 each from the 1st roll of Lomography 800, Fuji 200, and both instant film pictures. It also has 1 each from CineStill 800T, Portra 400, and the 3rd roll of Lomography 800. In general, this is probably the most mixed set of pictures. It covers the Blanton in the top section. It also has a blue/red theme wth Shooks and Pastel Ghost. At the bottom, it’s a bit scattered with sculpture and nature.

The second set is a bit more defined. The top section is a bit less defined, but is roughly about the city. Hoboken Pie and a section of Amarillo at night fit together with The Contemporary on Congress and a street scene. The bottom section is entirely covered by my trip out to Amarillo, Palo Duro Canyon, and Enchanted Rock.

It consists of 3 pictures from Portra 160, 2 pictures each of Kodak Gold 200 and Lomography Metropolis, and 1 of Lomography 400, the 1st and 3rd rolls of Lomography 800, Lomography Purple, and Portra 800 pushed +1.

The last set is all live music. I think given the year and the pictures I took, it only made sense that it get its own dedicated section. When I was originally putting together this collage, there were bits and pieces that weren’t live music oriented but I made the decision that one of the sets had to be solely devoted to it. So much of my thinking around photography in 2022 was devoted to live music and the difficulties and realities of it that it has to be represented strongly. With this set and the others scattered, live music takes up 16 of the 36 so it only makes sense that there’s an unbroken grouping for it.

It consists of 3 pictures each from Lomography 800 pushed +1 and Portra 400, 2 from CineStill 800T and Lomography 400, and 1 each from the 1st and 2nd roll of Lomography 800.

I learned a lot in 2022 about shooting on film. While there are a fair number of somewhat similar pictures in this collage in total (look at that top right corner!), I really do think that I took a lot of different pictures as well. This was a really fun exercise and I’m looking forward to doing it next year. In the first TV’s Daniel post, I mentioned reviewing the pictures I took this year and putting that Katie Toupin and Cuffed Up post next to each other. Well here it is. I don’t think I would’ve necessarily connected the dots on those two pictures if I hadn’t decided to put them together here. It makes me think more big picture on what pictures I take and why I take them. Ultimately, that’s what this entire site is for so it really is something I want to commit to in the future.

Anyways, that’s it for 2022 posts. Next up is a post about my plans for 2023 regarding photography and then I’ll be back to specific picture type posts.