In August, I shared the news with my friends on Facebook and Instagram that Forrest MacCormack had visited me at my house to make a portrait for his 520 Film Project. Forrest began his project in February 2017 with the goal of photographing 52 people with one roll of medium format film per subject. Each roll of film has 10 exposures. So … 52 people x 10 exposures = 520! It is a brilliant project and he has made many beautiful portraits of very interesting people.

He states on his blog 520filmproject.blogspot.com … “I want to accomplish a number of things. I enjoy photographing people. I’ve slowed down in the number of portraits I’ve made in the past few years. I miss working with some aspects of shooting film. I miss working with the awesome film cameras that I used to work with.”

Forrest has approached his project as an artist by creating beautiful images, a storyteller by capturing the essence of his subjects with fascinating tales of their lives, and an educator by talking about the experience of shooting film. At a time when film photography is celebrating a renaissance, Forrest’s journey explores the value of film in an era of increasingly technology alternatives.

I met Forrest at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the late 1980s where we both studied photography. I always knew he was a special person, who embodied the spirit of photography and not just someone who made good images. Forrest had an insatiable desire to learn, was fascinated with history, and made meaningful images. At that time, film was our primary technology (although digital was just emerging). We learned every technical aspect of shoot film and could map tone reproduction from the original scene through to prints. It was a scientific foundation that was necessary to create great images.

Today, it seems that film photographers are more interested in the mystery of film, the quality of analog, a capture process that is expensive and requires patience and discipline, and a wet process that is tactile. The experience for digital natives is different than that for Forrest and I who are film natives. It’s interesting to read about his experiences shooting film again, both positive and negative. I strongly encourage my friends to visit his blog and follow his journey. Of course, you can read about his recent visit to photograph me at my house in Delaware.