Topic: Whoops! I did it again...

[Ed Wenn]

Hi everyone and happy 2023. I've been shooting colour film with a Yashica GTN Electro 35 that I bought 20 years ago and it's proved to be an island of reliability and inspiration after a couple of years of struggling with my K-mount Pentaxes which just keep dying on me. I'm looking forward to a European summer filled with sunlight and the sound of me clicking my way through a small portion of the film mountain that I have amassed over the years. Here are three lab scans from the latest film: Berlin and London.

Oh, and that other thing...yeah we forgot to pay our Web hosting fees for Filmwasters again , so we went off the air for a day or so. Very sorry about that, but we're back now and all paid up for another year.

[Francois]

Hey Ed!
Long time no see. So, what's up?
Is that Amy in the third photo?

[Ed Wenn]

Hiya, yes that's the recently-turned-18 year old Amy in the last photo. It's actually a lot sharper than the forum has rendered it, but enough of that. She's a Filmwasters baby, all grown up now. In fact I think she was born the year we started FW. Weird. She's shooting film herself now and taking some really cool photos too. I hope she sticks with it.

Other than that life is much the same. Not enough time for anything. Too much stuff to do etc. etc.

How about you?

[Francois]

Wow, if I had come across her on the sidewalk, I wouldn't have recognized her!

Here, it's the usual road construction nightmares. The city just closed another major road for work, so it's even harder than ever to get anywhere. But there's not much I can do about that.

Mom and dad are doing OK. But dad's gone in his most stubborn period ever, so life is a bit hard on that front.

I'm still looking for work... again. This is getting to be quite a depressing and worrying situation.

We got some new neighbors across the street and they are super nice, but funnily totally clueless when it comes down to home ownership. This makes for such a nice change from the old witch who used to live there 

So, still working in London or have they shipped you out once again to some random company?
Haven't had news from anyone in a long time. All I know is that Miles now lives in the south of France.
I really miss the old days when everyone would meed at photographica once in a while. But I guess that with inflation, Covid, the B word and all that s#!t that's going on, it's not very, how can I say, inspiring.

And here, it's a bit the same. My favorite camera store closed a few years ago. Montreal is getting filthy and dangerous with more roadwork than one can imagine. It can now take 1½h just to reach the bridge when in town, so I don't go there anymore.

I think I'm getting nostalgic...

Oh well...

[Ed Wenn]

Well, the only constant thing is change, right? I'm sorry to hear about the work situation, hopefully something will crop up that you enjoy and lasts for a bit longer. I'm still in London and had a job change during the pandemic, so am now not travelling to other cities anymore as part of the job.

I had no idea that Miles had moved. I need to check in with him as my sister spent 20+ years in the South of France until she moved back to the UK recently. I wonder if he's anywhere near where she used to live?

[Ed Wenn]

Actually, one cool thing that you might be interested in is that I asked Mauricio (Sapata) to shoot the front and back covers of my last album. He had taken some gorgeous panos of Sao Paulo over the last few years and I had wanted to ask him if I could use one of them on an album. The album is called 'Use The Daylight'. It starts with a track called Sunrise and it ends with a track called Sunset. You see what we did there, right?  We came up with a cover concept involving photos shot from the same location at night and daytime with the idea being that you could rotate the album sleeve and get differing views of the same scene. Mauricio was into the idea, however his city is so dangerous that there were very few locations where he felt safe standing for extended periods of time at night - especially with a weird, big camera! So it was back to the drawing board and eventually we (reluctantly) went with digital for ease of use and all round mobility. He ended up shooting a series of photos for us in the Japanese section of town as it was the only part he felt safe in after dark. It all came out really rather well. I consider it a win for Filmwasters, even if the final images were digital.

Here's the front cover - it looks a bit 'shrill' on the screen, but it's great on the LP:



Sorry it's so big. I'm just linking to images on Bandcamp. Here's the back cover:

[Francois]

That is so cool!
I didn't know he was still shooting.
Thing is, with people disappearing, we have no way of knowing anything they could be doing that is cool (or sometimes not).

I know Satish has dropped from both Flickr and here. I guess he's still blowing his horn in NYC, but I can't know for sure.

Last time I heard from Miles, it was because he was selling a big part of his camera collection. I got a few ones from him, but they were improperly wrapped and an untethered and unwrapped Kiev 6C had a face to face with a nice Ricoh auto-half during shipping. Both were goners by the time they arrived (there were loose screws and glass falling from the cracks at the bottom of the badly taped-up box). I have the feeling that he's been running into some hard times... but that's the case with so many people these days.

I haven't heard from Susan, Damion, Leanne or Skorj in ages. Same for Ailsa, Ann, Miller, Mimonju, Phil... All I know is that Susan still has her gig with B&W Photography magazine... or at least she still had last time I checked it out at the magazine stand.

As you can see, I'm in the total dark.

[Bryan]

Thanks for keeping the site going Ed!  I used to have a Yashica GTN Electro 35, great camera.  I think I sold it a few years ago to fund something else. 

Nice work on the album cover!

[Ed Wenn]

That is so cool!
I didn't know he was still shooting.
Thing is, with people disappearing, we have no way of knowing anything they could be doing that is cool (or sometimes not).

I think that unfortunately for a place like this, Facebook happened and a TON of people just moved their energies thataway. I use it for the music stuff because not having a FB and being in a band is really hard, but it's not somewhere I have any affection. However, it and Instagram is where a lot of former FWers are to be found and that's how I've kept in touch with Mauricio.

[Francois]

Personally, I've stubbornly refused to give in to The Zuck's empire. And lets just say it ain't easy, especially when people think you're some kind of luddite for not being there.

Since I didn't recognize Amy on the picture, do you think I'd be able to recognize Joe?

[Adam Doe]

Cool concept and cover art Ed! Looks great.