Research

The beginning stages of my research required taking the stack of developed photos in their respective envelopes and laying them out in chronological order. This allowed me to organize them by year and see just how many I was working with. My initial instinct was to also examine the content of photos taken but this was extremely difficult due to the quantity of photos and would have convoluted the data beyond the scope of this research.

After reframing my research to focus simply on the film itself, my next step was to recall what film stock each roll of film was which required examining the negatives as film manufacturers will put their name near the sprocket holes. I then made notes on each envelope regarding that film’s specific traits, black and white Ilford HP5 shot in 2016 on my Pentax k-1000 for example. With this information in mind I was able to create a spreadsheet to create a tally system with all of this data and allowed me to begin fitting it into a preliminary design mockup.

Challenges

The greatest challenge in this project was creating an initial system for organizing my raw data, in this case, all of my photos. While my organized nature ensured that they were still in the envelopes they got shipped in after development, figuring out the date that a specific roll of film was shot was a tremendous challenge which required meticulous labelling and storage.

Learnings

After collecting and examining the data I was able to make several distinctions. Among them was a noticeable dip in my level of interest in film when I began using digital cameras, as well as the correlation between how much I was shooting compared to my level of involvement in live music. My research also indicated that almost none of my “preferences” are reflected in the data. Film stocks that I would indicate as being favorites were typically shot the least due to their nature making them more difficult to acquire than films you can buy at drug stores. When examining what I would do differently regarding this piece, I think about the inclusion of the “on tour” subcategory. While I think its inclusion is important as touring was a significant and consistent source of photos, I think removing it could create more space in the design and allow for more focus on the other categories.