_valerian

Every night after I get home I get 5 rolls to developing and then I sit down at my kitchen table for my latest task at hand: Portfolio Negative Searching.

I cut my negatives into groups of 5, then I used to file them into negative files (of all things) which have 7 pockets but I used to only use 6 of them. This was to make it easy when I decided to go through and make contact prints. Clever readers will know that a roll of 36 frame film will not fit into 6 rows, as this will usually leave you with one little stub of 2 or three frames extra. The reason whay is that 6 rolls is the maximum that will fit on a standard 8×10 sheet of paper.
For a long time I just made orphan-sheets and put all the little ones into the same file- which made it kind of confusing because I would have six #36 and E frames in one file. Like I said, I planned to do contact sheets but after sheet 400 (By the way, Fuji has 100 count negative file sheets for like, 1200 yen. I grab a few at a time) I was all like, screw this Ain’t no way I am going to spend 2oo dollars on photo paper just to see these, so I started just usinsg one sheet per roll, and save for the 6×7 negative sheets, Contact Prints are not in my future.
But the real meat to the search is this: I go through a binder a night with my little light-board, a loupe and a pen and paper. I look at each frame and when I find the one I am looking for, I write the roll number (#1 was when I arrived here) and the frame number. Then I draw a little sketch of the photo and write keywords to remind me which one it is. Usually this gets me so sleepy I end up in bed by like 10. The goal is to get through all 500 or so rolls and print the maybe 100 (out of 18,000 pictures) Good Ones during summer break.

that
is
my
system