My wife is from Wuxi China and my first time visiting her hometown, we visited her old home which was also being torn down for a high rise. We were young and I never noticed that the photos I took at the time were very different from what I take now. I missed a lot of moments, such as her visiting her old home, but I am grateful I can go back, look at my photos from that trip and mentally recall these scenes. I can remember the way she felt that day, the food we ate, and our lives at the time. Great video, and great work!
This is stunning, raw work - zero pretense. If you rescan those photos into a book or zine, I would definitely open my wallet with what little is there. Seeing the past and present was bittersweet.
I always say, you can tell me a sad story without even speaking a word. Every time I see a town slowly fading into history is an interesting sad tale, that don't even require words. All the history, the memories, are always impactful. What has been lost, and what will replace it.
As other people have said, it was a wonderful wonderful episode, Sam. I feel happy, satisfied and grateful for stopping to watch your video. Thank you very much.
I'm an audience from bilibili.It's quiet a bad place to talk about photography.This is such a beautiful video.Thanks for you to bring the great stories to the English-speaking netiznes.🙌🤩
I think that you are correct that the film images we grew up have a deep psychological connection to our past. Thank you for creating and sharing about your childhood and birthplace in China. If you haven’t seen the film Fiddler on the Roof, you might like to watch it. It’s about generational change and cultural traditions. There is another great Swedish pair of films called The Emigrants and The New Land you might appreciate. Also check out the photographs by Zaharia Cusnir recently found in Moldova. He worked with an old Russian medium format the camera.
I think it's the best video on your channel so far. Great storytelling and beautiful shots of rural central China, with its shy people. It reminds me of scenes I've seen many times but are now disappearing. Both the past and present are captured wonderfully.
It has always been a pleasure to watch your episodes, but I found this one particularly good, a trip through memory lane, an emotional visit, the justification of taking all those films. You are a rich person. ☺
Such a powerful documentary! This story brought tears to my eyes. There is a sense of loss than one feels when going back home to see a different place than the one we remember. I hope you enjoyed your trip. Beautiful work, as always.
This is the most beautiful and original video I have seen in a long time! I am from India and somehow I felt lot more connected to this because things are similar. We all want things to get better and people to move to a better place. We sometimes do not notice what we lose in the process. Civilizations that are centuries old are changing drastically in decades. I will remember this when sometimes I feel frustrated at things not changing so fast.
Time and change will forever be none stoppable. I guess what we can do is to tell the story, until eventually the stories get replaced by new stories… but that’s okay too..
Sam, you can tell this story was straight from the heart! Yes we shoot film because of nostalgia, tactile feeling of creating something we made with our hands, etc... at the end of the day we are simply trying to save a piece of a moment that meant something to us that you can't replicate with a digital file. Truly a great video as always!
You never know where your work will reach, or for how long it will be remembered, I don't think there is a conscious pursuit on capturing that that will be missed, but as you said, time move forwards and the sense of sadness or melancholy that memories leave us its what it makes all this worth. BTW, I love the work you are doing, it's just amazingly well edited, the care and passion for learning and sharing reached someone in literally the other side of the world. Cheers from Santiago, Chile.
Wonderful video Sam! So melancholic, such effective music. Had me tearful several time for a childhood I wish I could revisit. Shooting film is my connection to the past and to a time without the internet, and I'm grateful with how you described this feeling.
Such a great message in this one. I, growing up with film photography in the US long before digital was a thing, I too have the same connection and nostalgia of what and how fun shooting and processing was, especially documenting life and loved ones around us. It is a treat to see the people from your home town and can only think that even when we are half a world away, how the same we all are. Those smiling faces you captured says a lot about the people there... so beautiful to see. Ah good times, good memories, right?!
Beautiful documentary!! It brought back my childhood memories and made me think about the first goal of my journey. Sometimes I try so hard to achieve something, but I forgot why I started it.
I am a craftsman, my entire life I have spent making things on a hobbyist and a professional level. Throughout the years I have done everything from design and build custom machinery, assembly lines, construction equipment, worked R&D for various places, and built custom / race cars. My personal life has always been similar - I find immense satisfaction in "doing things myself." If I can build, modify, or repurpose something myself - I believe that when something is created through a process that a human is heavily involved - it has a certain character about it. This is why I love film photography - I develop and scan all my own film so it is solely dependent on my efforts to create the finish product. I am a very mediocre photographer - but I really enjoy preserving snippets of my time on this planet via the "mad scientist" (my friend's 8 year calls it this lol) process of film photography. There is a certain sense of satisfaction and validation when I develop my crappy pictures using a rotary processor I built, scanned them on a scanning rig I built, and the print them - and frame them with a frame I built, a matte I cut, etc. You can't do that with Digital, it just isn't the same. Digital photography is superior from a technical aspect. It is faster, easier, more flexible, more reliable, and more accessible. However digital is missing the "journey" - and for many people that is more important or equally as important than the end result. I always am disappointed when someone wants to fire up a debate over Digital versus Film, as it nearly is always some sort of self-serving endeavor based on a measurable result, or the technical prowess of their digital camera. Film photography isn't about that - and that is why the debate is fruitless and pointless. Film photography is the manual transmission sports car of photography, it is taking the longer, slower, scenic route on a road trip, or growing your own tomatoes instead of going to the store. It may not be as "efficient" as Digital, but has way more character. Film or Digital - does it matter? No. It doesn't. All that matters is if you enjoy it in some way or another.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I’m not a crafty person at all for how much I wish I am.. I’m so clumsy and I drop things and knock over things so often it’s not even funny… but I totally understand the feeling of “making something by hand”.. I also process and scan my film, sometime I wonder if the difficulty of the process made me feel like my photo is better than it actually is LOL~ but that’s okay, it’s nothing wrong to be experience driven than results driven….
Sam this is both epic and sad. I hate seeing traditions fade like this. What a beautiful time you grew up in. I often feel the same way when I go home to Detroit and see my old neighborhood diminished. This is a great project and video. Thanks for sharing this my friend. You.re an awesome soul.
Thank you, Sam for a wonderful story. I don’t know why, but I was crying all this time. Thanks again. You are inspiring me to not forget about film photography ❤
Sam, can I add my congratulations to all the others here on your beautiful video, taking us back to your birthplace and memories. Your choice of music really compliments the footage, which is so important too. It is sad to see the destruction of our former homes and a "weakening" of our childhood memories, but as you say, new improved homes are better in the long run. In my neighbourhood here in London there are a lot of high rise buildings and whilst they offer improvements they also bring a sense of isolation and in many cases, loneliness, but I suppose that's the price of progress. I hope you enjoyed your New Year and best wishes for this year, and I'll continue to look forward to your videos! 👍👍👏👏👏👏
I leaved in London for a few years, I often just spend weekend wandering around.. I hated the weather there lol.. but I do miss all the wandering .. Here in LA, people all just drive, I miss taking bus, subways, trains in UK for sure~ and thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed the video.
I am really happy and mixed feeling of the story, a good story and good editing vdo clip. The bad part is you make me want to buy a medium format such as Pentax sooonnnnn 😂
Great video Sam. I feel absolutely the same. every time I saw those pack of negative on my drawer, I feel tired and also not feeling ownership, because I need to scan it again if I could not find their scanned so it is like a trash? Some scanned negatives one are around my computer so it made no different than those digital photos. I think film makes sense for personal project because the experience and the process of shooting film make you focus on the photos rather than editing. (Yes, you might still need to edit film but it just takes less time to edit afterward)
I feel like it’s a very different type of editing we are doing between digital and film~ I enjoy editing film a bit more.. but that being said, dust removal still sucks 😂
this is the great content that i always want to watch. plz make a video talk about “how to exposure meter and exposure compensation for portrait”. i try to take some portraits like you but none of these photos can compare with yours. plz help some people like me.
Simple answer. You either really like the imperfections film grain adds. Or you just want to be trendy, since film grain is an objectively bad thing to have. It degrades the image quality. But at the end of the day, photography is more about what you want to see and not what is the most accurate image. If you took a super high quality camera from today to the past, no one would complain about a lack of grain.
