Other Notable Blogs

Cafe Unknown
Travel, History and Portland Oregon by Dan Haneckow

Jack Bog's Blog
By Jack Bogdanski of Portland, Oregon. (Like he needs any other introduction by now? -- A.B.C.)

For Portlanders Only
"Why buy a mattress anywhere else?"

Good Stuff NW
Featuring stuff that is good in the NW

LOST Magazine
LOST Magazine is an online monthly magazine that combines elements of many other literary, online, and national magazines with a singular mission--to reclaim in writing lost people, places, and things.

Mapes on Politics
Way West of the Beltway

Outside Is America
A journal about photography, roadtrips, trains and life, with occasional detours into movies, baseball, music, family and more.

The Photographers' Railroad Page
Good photos usually have good stories to go with them.... The goal of The Photographers' Railroad Page is to provide an outlet for top quality photographs and their story.

Portland Food & Drink
Throwing Ourselves on the Grenade of Bad Food to Save You

Portland Transport Blog
A Conversation About Access & Mobility in the Portland/Vancouver Region

PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media -- and booksellers

RailPixCritic
One person's musings on railroad photography, focusing on discussions of specific images or groups of same

Rambling West
The musings of a farmer with a typewriter and camera

Stumptown Confidential
Documenting Portland, Oregon architecture, history, and culture through photos, postcards, and words.

The Unauthorized Observer
Observations on faith, photography, trains, baseball, the city where I live (Fullerton, Calif.), anything that I find funny (a lot of things) or irritating (some things) and various incidents involving friends and family.

Under the Weather
...the open road, fatherhood, family life, music, railroads, photography, popular and unpopular culture, sex, violence, religion, the oppression of consumerism and capitalism and the general bullshit that makes up modern life.

Urban Planning Overlord
A blog to counter the myths, lies, and demagoguery others use against sound city planning to further their own ends, fair and foul - but also to urge the profession itself to pull back from the occasional wretched PC exces.

VanPortlander
Living in Vancouver; working in Portland. I have some thoughts.

Whiskey, Texas
...life and experiences in Texas and the Southwest. Recurring themes: Photography, railroads, fading ads / ghost signs, fallen-flag railroad logos, boxcars, bicycling, Texas music, pop culture, sports, road trips, literature, kids and family.

World Scott
The Travel Writing and Photography of Scott Lothes

Blegs & Bargains

 Amazon Book Wishlist

 B&H Wishlist

 My eBay Listings

 Powell's Books Wishlist

Saturday, October 27, 2007

I am an adherent of film-based photography. The advances of quality and ability in digital photography are by no means small. Add to this that a lot of friends shoot in digital. However, those aspects do not interest me. My background in the visual arts comes from painting, watercolor in specific. The textural, sensual feel of making the art, the sense of craft that comes from an all-analog process, these are the things that attract me to photography. This is why it's become a passion alongside my painting, instead of just a mechanical sketchbook.

Unfortunately my current living situation makes developing and printing at home impractical. In addition, developing slides is very nearly impossible at home, involving a process that is far more touchy and hazardous. Because of this, I've done most of my developing with labs. Portland, a capital of the advertising industry, was at one time blessed with pro labs who offered top notch work and fast turnaround.

Of course, the digital revolution has changed all that. My first pro lab, Wy'East Color, went out of business not long after the media industry implosion that followed the 2001 Dot Bomb. Following that, I began to use a gem of a lab, PhotoCraft. The lab was located on the third floor of the Oregon Pioneer Building. The base level of the building houses the famous Huber's. PhotoCraft offered a quick turnaround of 4 hours for film developing. The result was that whenever I needed to handle developing, I'd just hop an early express bus downtown, drop the film, then go kill four hours exploring downtown. I always meant to get to eating at Hubers, reasoning I'd stop by and have a Spanish Coffee and one of their trademark turkey sandwiches.

Earlier this year, the Photocraft offices moved one door down, to a smaller space. At the same time, they reduced their hours. I began to sense something might be closing in.

Fast forward to this August, I returned to Ohio to visit friends and do some photography. Once I returned, I had a small pile of Fuji slide film to deal with. Since I was broke, I tossed them in a Ziploc and threw them in my mini-fridge. Motivation didn't strike until a week ago. I hadn't been downtown since July, so I was looking forward to the trip, figuring I'd do a bit of walking around, maybe checking out the progress of construction on the Bus Mall. In through the doors of the building, up the elevator, down the hall... to a darkened door.

The course of things had finally taken it's toll. As of August 20th, the lab's retail film services had closed.

This isn't to say I'm without options. Thankfully, Blue Moon processes film as well as maintaining it's stock of retro-cool cameras and journalism-related gear. (It's like stepping into 1965 there.) But of course, there's no 4 hour turnaround at Blue Moon. Plus, they are located in St. Johns. As much as I love St. Johns with its nostalgic yet healthy blue collar feel, it's an additional twenty minutes away for me and not easily accessed via transit from the depths of suburbia.

I'm thankful for Blue Moon. Many places don't have it so good. And I have to say their work was excellent. But all the same, I'm saddened to see this latest turn of events. I'll always shoot real, honest-to-goodness black-and-white film, but at least as far as color photography goes, I suspect it's only a matter of time before I go digital.

Labels: Photography, Portland History, Technology

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