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Ranch & Big Sky, Entre Rios Argentina

Every photographer has his or her own way of doing things. Some travel light, some bring the kitchen sink, some develop immediately while others wait and slowly catch up.  I have tried it all it seems, and have slowly fallen into a routine for each trip. Targeted images are listed, locations noted and gear selected based on the kind of images I am after. When I return there is a set sequence of things that I do to get organized again.

Moisture and fungus is a constant threat for photographers. I have seen more lenses damaged due to fungus then due to scratches. So when I return the very first thing I do is pull out all the gear out of the travel bag, load it into an air tights tub after removing lens caps and opening the camera backs, and put a moisture absorbing gel with them. I leave them that way for a couple of days at least to pull out all the moisture from the trip. 

On this particular trip, I was traveling home to the family ranch. I had never really taken film pictures of the ranch and really wanted to focus on that medium. I shot five rolls of 120 HP5+ film, two 120 rolls of Portra 160 and 12 rolls of 135 film. I mostly focused on portraits and details around the ranch. I hope to be able to pull it into a small photo book about the trip. 

Regardless of what I do with the final images, that is a great deal of developing time that I need to put in.  Most of the 135 film is either Foma100 or HP5+, which helps however the film was shot at different ISO values which complicates things a bit.

My method for dealing with this is to divide up the rolls of film based on development time. I then try to get them done in batches of 3 rolls at a time. This is large enough to make a dent but small enough to be able to shoot different ISO values. 

We arrived back this morning, the gear is in its dryer and I have downloaded a few of the digital files. I will now set out to develop a few rolls of film! The journey is not over for me until the film is developed and a few prints made.