I just wanted to apologize for the lack of posts here lately.  We’re in the process of finding a new house and moving and my free time is scarce.  I’ll be posting regularly soon.

It turns out that a $45.00 buy at a garage sale will be worth $200 million for a lucky Californian.  Rick Norsigian bought two boxes with 65 glass negatives that were made by Ansel Adams.  This has to be the garage sale find of the century.  All of these negatives were thought to be lost in a dark room fire in the 1930′s and none of them have been printed before.  The funny part is that Rick talked the seller down from $70.00 to $45.00.  I guess he was worried about his return on investment.  I might just have to go to some garage sales this weekend!  To see the entire article from CNN with pics click here.

Artist Wanted just released the newest winner from their latest challenge.  I know this image isn’t film, but the contests are open to all art forms and film has won in the past.  This is a great opportunity to get your work noticed and also win some cash as well.  Most of the contests winners end up with some high visibility gallery time so get your work submitted for the next one.  They are now offering a promo code (found at the bottom of this post) to get your first submission free.  Here are the details of the current winner and a link to his gallery…

	This is it, the announcement of the selected photographer for the Grand Prize Award. With such an incredible array of inspired work to review, our judging panel took extra time to make this momentous decision. EXPOSURE attracted entries from around the world, from Morocco to Mexico, from Seattle to Shanghai and beyond. The work submitted transcended language, revealed culture and told countless stories from every corner of the planet. It’s an honor to be a part of this world-wide conversation and next week we will be highlighting 99 other photographers whose work stood out to our judges.Stay tuned to this e-mail list for that announcement. Without further ado, the winner of Artists Wanted’s second annual EXPOSURE competition is:
	Andrea Galvani of Milan, Italy “I work for weeks in an area. The process involves camping out, building temporary structures, shifting animals, people and physically intervening the space. In fact, I feel that I need to get close to the land, to slowly repossess it in order to then violate it, turn it on it’s head…” His deeply involved process and incredible images impressed our judging panel and we hope the world at large will feel the same way. View Andrea Galvani’s Portfolio Also, stay tuned for next week’s announcement highlighting another 99 outstanding portfolios.
	An Opportunity for All Artists, What would you create for $5,000, three months in NYC, and your very own art show? Our partners at 3rd Ward, are in their final 7 days of the open call for art of all mediums. The Summer 2010 Open Call is a juried international art competition looking for dynamic, inventive and provocative work of all mediums: painting, drawing, sculpture, animation, photography, illustration, graphic design, installation, video, performance, printmaking and more! You are invited to submit a portfolio of your best completed artwork, work-in-progress and/or conceptual proposal to be considered for the 3rd Ward Open Call. The awards are generous, the community is strong and the world is waiting to see what you have to show. Use promo code “ArtistsWanted” and your first submitted image is free! Click for details & to submit!

Some of the most fun I had during my college photography days were going out at night with a friend and shooting some long exposures.  There is something fun about locking the cable release and just letting time slip by while you have fun and wonder what the final results would be.  Even knowing the science behind night photography, you still wondered what your final exposure would look like and it was always somewhat of a guessing game.  Sure, there were frustrations with it like an airplane ruining your star trails, or your batteries giving up early on a cold night.  But overall, it was always a fun and rewarding experience and no matter what the subject matter, the pictures always seemed to impress my friends and family. 

Our friend Neal over at ThorleyPhotographics has written a nice article on how to shoot long night exposures.  He’s even put together a nice EV chart for determining your exposure that you can print out and keep in your bag.  If you’ve never done any night photography than this article should help answer your questions and give you some confidence before you go stumbling through the dark with your camera.  Get out there and take some night shots and post them to the ReturnToFilm Flickr gallery.  You can view the article here.

As I’ve been gearing up for getting back into the darkroom, I’ve been spending some time looking over my old notes on B&W.  During college I shot B&W pretty much exclusively and it didn’t take me long to realize the importance of using filters in B&W photography.  B&W film sees all colors pretty equally so without a filter your contrast and tones will be pretty flat.  So you can slap on a variety of color filters to transmit certain colors while blocking others.  The key to all this is knowing which color filter to use to get your desired result.  I found a nice article with examples over at the Zorkikat website.  It takes a single image and shows the difference the filters will make on the picture.  After you have been shooting B&W for a while all this will become natural and you can even start to visualize the final photograph and know what to expect.  If you can only buy one filter the yellow is probably your best bet for the largest variety of shots.  It’s the most common filter used in B&W photography.  Personally I like the higher contrast look of the orange filter for most landscape work.  So check out the entire article here and get to shooting.  Post some of your results over in the returntofilm Flickr group.