The Art of Chris Froelich

I am thinking of giving up on digital photography. I hear the siren song of analog (film) photography and manual focus lenses and I'm starting to adjust course.  I got another little push in this direction this week when I found some film in my car that needed to be developed. All of these pictures were taken with an Olympus Stylus Epic that I bought for $1.35 at goodwill. I have 3 more just like it. This particular model of the Stylus is starting to achieve a cult following. It is a totally automatic point and shoot with a fixed focal length of 35mm and a fast f/2.8 lens.  Every one of these pictures was an afterthought. I had the little camera in my pocket and would take some snaps while I was setting up my DSLR or waiting for the perfect light. Out of the 32 pictures on the roll, 5 were completely unusable because of "user error" like the blurry dashboard of the truck because I pushed the shutter as I was pulling it out of pocket or something and the other 14

As I walked about Missoula today, the sun was setting through broken clouds creating what is called "squall light". The light was falling on the hill, but not on the dark sky behind. At first I was just looking at it thinking that while it looked cool, it probably would never photograph well. But I had my camera around my neck with the 100mm Macro already so I took some shots trying to just use form and color for interest.  I was at Kathryn's play, and this was on the wall across the gym. I liked the way it looked but again thought it would probably not really work as a photograph. In fact, the only reason I have this shot is because I used the wall as my neutral grey to set my auto white balance for taking pictures in the gyn for the play. As I looked through the view finder I was thinking "hey, this looks kind of cool." I guess the moral of the story is: Take pictures. It is not like it cost me money to press the shutter. Sure, none of

Took Jack up to the Mission Valley to cruise around and scout some photography spots. Had mixed luck but enjoyed my time with Jack. Do you remember this barn? I will get a good shot of this barn yet. You can see a little bit of glow on a couple peaks, but a bank of clouds on the western horizon blocked the color from coming over. I am shooting easterly from this vantage point. This is the scene going on behind me about 10 minutes later. Sadly nothing in the foreground of much interest. Tried to get some kind of composition to take advantage of the sunset. Frozen Ninepipes about 20 minutes after the sun went down. I would have liked to get closer to the lake, but I wasn't prepared to walk out on the boggy wetland you see at the bottom. This is about a 15second exposure, so you can see the movement in the clouds. All in all, not a bad trip. The lack of snow for my barn picture is ok. This is a spot I may have to return to many times before I get the shot I know