The Art of Chris Froelich

I love misspellings on Ebay.      Olmpus = cheap camera! I was very excited to get an Olympus 35RC rangefinder last week. This is a little gem of a camera that is all metal, doesn't need batteries to work (except for the auto exposure meter, if needed), and a fantastic 42mm f2.8 lens that produces outstanding pictures. When I unpacked it, it was very dirty. In fact the rangefinder spot was dark because the window was full of dirt. I spent a few hours cleaning it up and it looked great, but it seems the aperture is a little sticky. It is two sticky for the auto exposure to work. The 35RC adjusts the auto exposure by opening and closing the diaphragm to match the shutter speed chosen. I brought it to the local camera shop for a internal cleaning and lube, but the wussies wouldn't touch it. Curse you Darkroom. Well, I wanted to make sure that everything else worked, so I went and bought the cheapest C41 film available, Kodak Gold, and ran a 24 exposure roll through the...

Some more analog photography, this time from a Nikon F100 that I've had around the house for a couple of years. I picked this camera up sans lens for less than a C-note and bought a crappy kit lens for $20 bucks at the local camera store. I purchased some nice manual focus lenses after I developed this roll of film and I am awaiting the results.  You know, that is part of the magic (horror) of film - the waiting. Did I just spend $32 on film, processing, and scanning on 36 pictures of my lens cover? You have to wait to find out. Of course that is only if you shoot E-6 or BW film. C-41 film you drop off at Costco, and for $3.99 you have professional results in about an hour. My understanding from the blogosphere is that Costco has the most consistent film developing outside of a professional lab, period This roll was developed at my local camera shop and they did a horrible job. My negatives are scratched I think they underdeveloped the roll. (The null hypothesis is that I u...

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 othe...

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 ...

River Ice Abstract , originally uploaded by photo_griz . Just a few more months, but it is agonizing. Here are some winter river snapshots. I was hoping to get something with color at dawn, but drizzly skies prevented anything neat from transpiring in that arena. However, I did remember a spot on the Clark Fork that tends to have ice back up so I stopped by on the way home. The grey sky made the water almost black for a nice contrast. River Ice

I did not expect this when I heard of this endeavor. The thought "what substance will they find in the uploaded narcissism of a self indulged generation" would have come into my mind if I had the time to compose my thoughts they way I do a blog entry. That was, however, the general drift of my opinion. I did not expect to be captured for ninety plus minutes, caught off guard, by a movie about....I don't know what. I guess about life.