Found Film Friday: Laguna Beach Photowalk

After last week’s “surfing” theme, I thought it would be fun to share another roll with a seaside theme.  This one is not that old, and it came with the same batch of film as “Michelle’s” fisheye roll, and “Mike’s” roll.  Like the other rolls, this one includes a “selfie.”  After having seen this batch of film that all came from a single seller, I imagine that “Mike” was the guy who would develop film for his friends, as these all appear to come from different photographers, but for some reason, this batch of film rolls just never got developed.

What’s interesting/different about this roll is that it appears to be from a “half frame” camera.  A typical 35mm camera produces negatives that are 35mm by 24mm.  But there were a few cameras over the years that would basically rotate the orientation of the film 90 degrees, and you would get “half” size photos, around 24mm by 18mm.  So in this case, a roll of 36 exposures actually produced 72 individual shots.  This came into vogue in the 1960s, because it allowed for smaller cameras (like the Olympus Pen, back in the day).  Once it became possible to make “normal” 35mm cameras in a smaller size, the half frame format sort of faded away again.

Like the other rolls in this batch, we can determine where and roughly when the photos were taken.  This is the photo that gave me the key info I needed:

Pat Tobin was a well-known area surfer, and a painter in his own right, who died in 2006. His friend, weatherman Dennis McTighe painted this mural in his honor in mid-March, 2006. It was just south of Main Beach, in Laguna Beach, California. From the condition of the mural in this photo, it looks like the photo may have been taken a few years later.

You can’t really tell for sure, but I’m guessing the photographer was part of a group.  Either that, or he really likes photographing other photographers in action.

Either is possible, I guess. Or both! I kind of like the photographer’s style. He was trying to be artistic in his composition. Nowdadays it’s easy to be critical, but you also have to remember, he took 72 film photos – one of every scene; nowadays you might take 5 or 10 different shots of the same thing using a digital camera – and you’d get instant feedback and know if your shot turned out how you wanted it.

Rather than put all the photos here, if you like what you’ve seen so far, I encourage you to check out the full set on Flickr. For this post, I’ll end with what I believe to be a “selfie” of the photographer.

This entry was posted in Found Film and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.