film – monadnock mama

A lot of photographers, when asked who their influences are, might name someone like Ansel Adams or Dorothea Lange. What’s interesting to me is that I’ve never really been drawn to the work of “famous” photographers; my biggest photography role model has always been my own mother, Roxanne Copeland. I decided that I wanted to do a feature on her work, and so I started looking back through some of her earlier pictures that she did on film. I was amazed, stunned, and completely in awe of her talent! And, the funny thing is that, looking back at these photos (a lot of which were taken during my childhood), I can so clearly see the influence of her work on my own picture-making efforts. Some of these pictures I’ve knocked off without even knowing it! I hope you enjoy seeing this little slice of my mom’s talent — which, I might remind you, was all done on FILM — and I’ll be back with a follow-up of her digital work sometime soon.

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Fourteen years ago I inherited my grandfather’s Canon AE-1 Program 35mm camera because I needed it for a black & white photography class I was taking in college. I used it for the class, and never really picked it up again. I recently thought I might give film another try, so I busted out the old camera. After messing around with it for a few minutes, I realized that there was a partially used roll of film in the camera. I had to find out what was on it, so I finished it up and shot another one with some leftover film that was hanging out in the camera bag.

I brought my film to Monadnock Imaging to be developed and printed, fully expecting nothing to come out. The camera is as old as I am and the film is from around the year 2000, so definitely expired. I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up my prints, and I have to give all the credit to the magicians at Monadnock Imaging for being so good at what they do. My prints are like a time capsule (hence the title of this post) full of pictures of a very little Lillia! She looks to be about three years old in the photos so I must have used the camera more recently than I thought, but it was still a looooong time ago. There were also some good ones of Zane and Damian from the present day.

The aesthetic of the 21st century leans toward a sort of unearthly perfection, aided in part by the popularity of digital photography and Photoshop. I really like all the grain and imperfections from the expired film. You can replicate that look to some degree by tweaking digital photos in post-production, but it’s just not the same. I may have a new obsession. Here are my favorites from the two rolls:

Canon AE-1 Program 35mm camera // Kodak Professional CN400BW film //
Processed & scanned by Monadnock Imaging, Keene, NH