Gumball Raccoon and the Kodachrome Tribute
Gumball Raccoon Kodachrome - 12.8mm at f/2.8, ISO 80, Shutter speed 1/2000 sec
The Associated Press carried a story last week about Kodachrome film. A film that has been produced by Eastman Kodak since 1935. That's a 74 year run up until roughly June 22nd 2009 when Kodak announced that they would stop producing the film. Kodachrome became first commercially successful color film in the world. It's a real shame that sales had declined to the point where producing it became a liability for the company.
Back to the original story and that is one of photojournalist Steve McCurry, who I greatly regret not seeing talk at the National Portrait Gallery about a month ago. Steve was a photojournalist for National Geographic for 30 years, and has been shooting with Kodachrome film for 35 years. What a 'job'! And if you're wondering exactly how many frames with Kodachrome he's shot, you'll probably be shocked to know he has more than 800,000 images in his lab. WOW. A big chunk of one million images. No surprise then that Steve was the man given the last few rolls of Kodachrome film, and last week Monday he developed 36 slides in Parsons, Kansas. Why Parsons, Kansas? Well Dwayne's Photo Service in Parsons is the last place on earth you could have your Kodachrome film developed. If you had any, that was. They will stop developing Kodachrome film on the 10th December 2010, so you better get in fast.
So what's on that last roll of film, and what's going to happen to the prints? Well National Geographic decided to (what else but) document the journey of that last roll right down to it being processed. Steve began shooting with it in New York, and then travelled to India and then back to New York shooting iconic filmmaking personalities along the way. This journey with the film took Steve 2 months The last three frames, he shot in Parsons. I hope the very last one was in Dwayne's Photo Service.
If National Geographic do indeed publish the story of the last roll of Kodachrome, it'll more than likely be a spread in a Spring 2011 issue, but will only consist of 4 - 6 images off the roll. If you want to see the entire roll, you'll have to visit the George Eastman House, the International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester New York, where Kodak are based.
Kodak have decided to celebrate the films history with an online gallery of iconic images shot with the film. If you'd like to see them, head over to Kodak's Kodachrome Tribute. If you are a indeed a Kodachrome shooter, you are going to have to look towards other Kodak color films such as KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTACHROME E100G or EKTAR 100.
Gumball Raccoon Tri-X - 12.8mm at f/2.8, ISO 80, Shutter speed 1/2000 sec
I took this shot last weekend Saturday after quite a long and hot shoot in Notting Hill, London, where I'd decided to go and shoot as many of the "Notting Hill" movie's film locations as I could. The top image has been 'shopped with a Kodachrome film type in Photo Tools Pro. It's also been cross processed to bring out the blues and greens. The image above was processed from the top effected image and I used Silver Efex Pro to apply a Kodak Tri-X film and a very light blue toner thereafter. You can download the SFX preset at the end of this blog post.
Blogging inspiration comes from a video recording of a U2 gig I was at in Jo'burg, South Africa in 1997, the song "Gone ♫".
