Movement in Film Photography with Matthew Cawrey and the Lomography ActionSampler

Brighton-based Matthew Cawrey explores the more alternative areas of film photography, experimenting with film soups, double exposures, and destructive techniques to create images that touch on themes of serendipity, decay and memory. They also have a YouTube channel dedicated to analogue photography and run alt_filmmag, a blog dedicated to alternative photography processes. We were struck by the playful nature of Matt's work and sent them an ActionSampler with some LomoChrome Purple and LomoChrome Color '92 to try out. They shared the results with us and talked about the inspiration behind turning these four frame photos into small animations.

Hi Matthew, please tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi, I'm Matthew and I'm an experimental analogue film photographer currently based in Brighton studying photography at university. A lot of my work tends to explore the analogue medium and pushing it to its limits, whether that be through chemical alteration or shooting experimental film stocks.

How did you get into shooting with film?

I got into shooting film during my final year of A-Levels in 2021. I specifically remember my amazing photography teacher, Daryl, telling the class that if we were struggling with ideas for a project, we should try to shoot a roll of film and see how it goes.

I picked up a black and white disposable camera and the results didn't come out amazing, but something about the lofi aesthetic captured from the cheap plastic point and shoot really intrigued me. From there I kept buying more cameras and film, exploring the whole analogue medium through different formats and lenses.

Tell us about shooting with the ActionSampler. What did you choose to shoot?

Probably my favorite thing about this camera was all the interesting looks I got while using it. I really liked the colorful transparent look of the ActionSampler and going out shooting with it was probably the most fun I've had with a point-and-shoot recently. I took my roll of LomoChrome Purple to a park knowing the green from the grass would look really interesting on the film. I focused more on people and places moving around at first, like dogs walking in the park or my friend Storm who I was out shooting with. Using the camera itself was really fun as well, something about the unique shutter sound and the fold up viewfinder is really charming. It changed the way I would normally shoot, purposely looking for motion in my frames. With my other roll of LomoChrome Colour '92 I took my skateboard out into Brighton's city centre and Lanes, where the streets are full of movement and vibrant character. Going round on my skateboard capturing frames was extremely exciting and the results from the motion look really good. Whether it was myself, the street, people or dogs I was taking photos of, getting the scans back and making them into little animations of movement was such an interesting process that I really enjoyed.

How did you find the different results from the two different films?

I'd never shot LomoChrome Color '92 before this, and the results really surprised me. There's a blue-ish undertone to the images contrasted with really vibrant reds that pop in the frames, creating a cool but fuzzy nostalgic character to the images. It performed really well in the ActionSampler and some of the image's pop really nicely. I had shot LomoChrome Purple before and loved the results, so I knew shooting it in the ActionSampler would look really good. I took it out on a sunny day at the park which really helped emphasize the purple hue in the imagery. This film stock makes the images look otherworldly which I adore, with some of the highlights in the images having this wonderful bloom. I did shoot in some lower light conditions which lead to some grainy goodness, which I love regardless.

You made some fab little stop animations from these shots. How did you go about making them and what was the response?

I made my animations of my images on Adobe After Effects, but any rudimentary editing software would be fine for editing these on. I aligned each other 4 frames from the image over each other then let them play for 10 frames each, creating these short little bursts / GIFS of motion from the images which I really like! The response I've had from showing off the camera and the animations have been great; I've had old friends telling me how much they've always wanted to use one of these or how cool the camera looks. I've also had a fair number of followers asking me about the film stocks themselves and my thoughts on the color hue shifts.

What's coming up next for you?

I'm heading into my third and final year at university so I'm excited to see what work I produce there for my final two projects, and what will come after. I've also been working on my YouTube channel on the side which recently hit 1,000 Subscribers, which I'm really pleased about. Other then that, my plans are to keep shooting film and keep experimenting.

To see more of Matthew's work visit their website and Instagram.

2024-09-12 #gear #people #videos #animation #movement #actionsampler #stop-frame