18 Comments
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Callahan's avatar

I absolutely love this style of sharing your work and going over all the film and camera bodies. I will have to try and summarize my photographing outings like this in the future. The pics are great! What a cool opportunity.

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Gajan Balan's avatar

That you, truly appreciate you sharing that.

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Anthony Ned's avatar

Do you ever have any trouble traveling with film? I haven't had good luck getting things hand checked when traveling outside the US

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Gajan Balan's avatar

The only place I have trouble is through India. With the new scanners in US and Europe, it seems like they’re more willing to hand check.

I went through Toronto, Finland, Norway, and Germany for this trip and every single airport was willing to hand check the film.

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Wesley Verhoeve's avatar

Love a lot of these! Also a 20% hit rate IS GREAT

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Gajan Balan's avatar

Thank you so much Wesley. And you're right, it's actually a great place to be. Especially the first time out there.

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James Green's avatar

Love the risks taken! An amazing way to see where you are at and what areas can be worked on.

Large format up next? 👀

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Gajan Balan's avatar

As much as I’ve said that I don’t have the time and patience for large format, I feel like some experimentation is gonna happen at some point. I just need to find the right opportunity, haha. Thanks for reading ✌🏾

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Romain's avatar

Nice work Gajan! As usual :)

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Gajan Balan's avatar

Thanks for reading ✌🏾

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Valipokkann's avatar

That shot from inside the ship.

I kinda have a love hate relationship with it.

The kerning kinda triggers my OCD.

But the cool ice and faint reflection of other windows over the glass makes it interesting.

It’s like a Rebel with cause or something 😝😍

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Gajan Balan's avatar

Haha, thank you ✌🏾

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Adam Muise's avatar

Shooting film in the Arctic? You mad man! I would have brought my SL3 or M11 for some backup, you are committed. Great output by the way. I could look at the ice flow shots all day. I hope you get an inkling to print the medium formats very large, I bet they come out as a great living room (or everything wall in a Toronto condo) wall print.

Also, I work in New York a lot and I ran into Sire (@projectroman) at Leica Store Meatpacking. I follow both of your street work separately and stumbled across your combined work recently and realized you know each other. I would love to see the results of more of your combined shoots, even a photo walk. You guys should host something together.

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Gajan Balan's avatar

Haha, I absolutely had those digital bodies as the main drivers but I had to make room for film to challenge myself a little more. And small world! Sire and I go way back, along with his brother Jason. Hopefully we can put together an event in New York soon. Thanks for reading!

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Arsalan Alim's avatar

Great write up Gajan, this is such a invaluable source of information as a film shooter. I sure as hell won't be going anywhere with these conditions, but learning from your experiences gives me confidence to tackle more extreme situations when it comes to shooting film.

I'm so glad you took slide film with you, the image of the ice sheets is breathtaking. The inky blackness of the water, contrasted with the texture of the ice sheets, make it look like they're emerging from space. So sick 🙌🏽

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Gajan Balan's avatar

Thank you brother. And you never know where life might bring you. All I know is that you gotta have some film just in case, haha. Thanks for reading.

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Mike Bridges's avatar

I love the simplicity of the shots. I know they weren’t easy to shoot but they look effortless. Very well done.

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Gajan Balan's avatar

Thank you Mike, that actually means a lot.

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