So Long, and Thanks for All The Films

It’s been a while since I did any Kodak bashing, but the latest news from Rochester is that part of the business up for sale will include its consumer film emulsions. Interestingly, they still plan on producing motion picture film, and there is some debate about whether Kodak includes its professional films with its consumer films!

Whatever it sells off, and whatever it keeps, I think it is safe to say that Kodak is officially dead. Everything that made Kodak great is gone or going to the highest bidder, and judging by the difficulty they’ve had selling off what should be a very lucrative patent portfolio, one has to wonder how they will ever sell an unprofitable part of the business.

The really annoying thing for me though are the number of anti-film/film is dead/ why would anyone use film comments circulating off the back of the story. Well Kodak’s film stock may be going bye-bye, but Ilford are turning a profit, Fuji are doing okay, despite whittling the range down, and there are plenty of Eastern European companies making film. There’s even Lomography, and let’s face it, any company who’s livelihood is built on selling cheap plastic cameras to people who’ll pay a massive premium for them is going to make sure there’s film available.

Kodak may be dead, but film lives on, despite the naysayers.

Under the Bridge

There’s graffiti and then there’s graffiti. Sadly, around Leeds there tends to be more ‘so-and-so waz ere’ graffiti than Banksy. That said, I’m a big fan of graffiti done well. Inner city train journey’s are certainly made less boring with a variety of graffiti.

Clearly the tagger has a certain style and flair with the spray can, and I like the green and blue used, but it does lack a certain pazazz. The one below is on the same bridge and is a typical example of common-all-garden inner city graffiti, which is why people view graffiti as a blight on the urban landscape instead of the art form it can be.

Compare the shots above with this snapshot from Memphis. Wouldn’t our cities be brighter with more of this?

A shame, because Leeds, like a lot of cities, has a lot of dull, grey concrete that needs livening up.

North Street

This small section of Leeds has been on my photographic radar for a while and I’ve waited until I had some colour film loaded before heading down there. I was lucky really as I wanted someone walking past of the shop front and had two cyclists come by one after the other.

I love the colours of the shops along this stretch, though I did miss out some of the greens of the Paradise Balti, so I’ll probably go back again some time. (I have a couple of other ideas for this stretch of road anyway!)