A 4×6 Brag Book – It’s a Thing! (A Real Thing!)

My partner MaryLee went to Cincinnati for her niece's wedding and took along a small Olympus XA2 35mm film camera loaded with a single roll of Ilford HP5+ Black and White Film. Good setup if you have decent light--the camera sports a 35mm f3.5 lens. She photographed some of the behind-the-scenes that she had access...

How I’m Getting Away From My Phone

Here's what I did. I created a simple lock screen image and home screen image for my phone out of my ASMP media credentials. Now, whenever I hit the wake-up button on my phone, before I unlock it, I see the first image (below) on my Lock screen, which I can show to security personnel...

In a World of Fake Things, Give Me Something Real

Besides misinformation filling our airwaves, there are fake things filling our world nowadays. I was walking through a Costco today and I saw a box with ten "candles" for sale for $24.99 only they weren't really candles, they were battery-operated flameless candles supposed to look like real candles. They come complete with a wireless remote...

We Have Choices Today. I Choose the Analog. The Tangible.

Like vinyl records versus digital CDs. Tube versus solid-state guitar amplifiers. Home-cooked meals versus microwaved. Hand-written (or typed) greeting cards versus emails. Film versus digital photography. Traditional photographic prints versus NFTs. I'm in the tangible art business!~Kenneth Wajda I make film portraits using 20th-century techniques and cameras and print in a traditional darkroom. For those...

I Miss Pay Phones, Snapshot Photos & A Simple Disconnected Society With Stories to Tell

Remember those tall glass structures that you could climb into to make a phone call, a space all to yourself that shut you off from the world, offered you a bit of silence from the street traffic around you? They were as ubiquitous as the cell phone in your pocket. They were everywhere, and ready...

Golden Age of Analog Photography

We are really living in it, a new golden age of analog photography. Sometimes we can't see something while we're in it. You can either be in the mountains, or off the mountains looking at them--they're impossible to see while you're in them. But there couldn't be a better time to be an analog photographer....

Everyone I Meet at Yard Sales Misses Photography

There’s a growing interest in film photography among young people (to whom it’s brand new!) I love teaching about photography and getting these old film cameras that documented so many of our lives, keeping them alive and working for a new generation of photographers, making prints, creating art. I work one-on-one with students in Boulder...

A Photographic Revolution In the Air

Alfred Stieglitz, photographic pioneer I'm reading a biography of the legendary photographer, Alfred Stieglitz by Dorothy Norman. I'm finding it a fascinating read, how he challenged rules. When he was young and played sports, he often wanted to change the rules of the game. In his photography and his life, he wanted to not "hit...

Vernacular Photography (aka Snapshots): Time Slices of a Different Era

There's just something about a snapshot from yesteryear, with its ubiquitous white border, its black and white tone (and sometimes color) in sizes rather on the small size. Many of these photographs were 3x4" or smaller. Below is a gallery of photos selected from a case full of pictures purchased at a flea market that...

“But Digital is Much More Convenient.”

I see those words written a lot and they are often heard when I mention I shoot film photographs. To which I want to say, "Who said convenient art was the best art?" Another one is, "It's so expensive photographing on film, I don't see how you do it," while they're carrying the latest Sony...