• Home
  • Reviews Index
  • Best Gear
  • Inspiration
  • Learn
  • Disclaimer
  • Staff/Contact Info
  • Media Kit
  • Membership
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Photography Culture

Mike Ioannidis: From Observer to Analog Film Photo Creator (NSFW)

Chris Gampat
No Comments
04/27/2017
3 Mins read
phobl3

All images by Mike Ioannidis. Used with permission.

Photographer Mike Ioannidis is a 26 year old mechanical engineer that loves bike riding, climbing and analog photography. He lives in Athens, Greece.  “…photography has played a vital role in my life!” Mike tells us about the last seven years. “Although it doesn’t pay my bills, it serves a greater purpose!” For Mike, photography is a form of self expression. He gets a chance to express emotions, feelings and capture what he sees, in the unique way.

Like many of us, we use photography to remember moments. In particular, for Mike it was a way for him to just keep memories alive. Well, that is until he got into film photography; then he started to name Vivian Maier, Ansel Adams and Bill Brandt as his influences. “Shooting film gradually led me on creating these valuable moments and rapidly transformed me from an observer into a creator.” Indeed, that’s very evident in the work that Mike does. He attributes this to the preference he has for the process of creating a photo which includes planning, inspiration and a lot of love-giving into it.

Mike’s process involves shooting film, developing and working in the darkroom to get a very specific look. Better yet, he does this without any sort of digital means. Because he’s working with his hands and without any sort of distractions, Mike says that he gets to use his creativity to the fullest. But don’t get him mistaken, the images don’t really come out in the darkroom. Instead, Mike visualizes what he wants before he even clicks the shutter.

According to Mike:

Before I “pull the trigger”, I take into consideration every possible variable, I try different shooting angles and different lighting until the time, in my viewfinder appears what I was hoping to see from the first time.

Sometimes you never see that image you had on your mind, but most of the times is because you didn’t search enough for it.

This pursuit for perfection in order to take a picture is what made me fall in love with analog photography and made me distinguish it completely from digital photography.

Mike’s favorite camera is what he calls the medium format Ukrainian “monster” KIEV 60 used with the Carl Zeiss Biometar 80mm, the 50mm Flektogon, the 180mm Sonnar and the Mir 65mm. But he also totes around the LUBITEL 1, the KODAK Brownie 620, a homemade 6×6 pinhole camera made out of cardboard and a homemade 6×9 pinhole camera made out of thin wood at times.

When it comes to 35mm film I use the PENTAX Spotmatic F, the EXA 1B and the CANON Canonet QL19. Nowadays, I’m completely into black and white film, with KODAK TMAX 400 and ILFORD DELTA 400 being two of my favorites. Less often I shoot with ROLLEI Infrared films, FOMAPAN films and the “sketchy” SHANGHAI films.

I process black and white films using the ILFORD Ilfosol 3 or the ILFORD Perceptol (which I prefer because of the smooth tones and the low grain it results in),I use a mix of water and vinegar as Stop bath and afterwards I use the ILFORD Rapid fixer and the same goes for paper (except Perceptol and “vinegar stop bath”).

Most of the times I presoak the film in water before I pour the developer inside the tank and often
I “push” 100 iso films to 400 iso, a process that has never let me down.

Make sure you find more of Mike’s work at Behance and Flickr.

120 35mm art black and white creator darkroom delta film greece ilford kodak Mike Ioannidis nsfw
Shares
Written by

Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
Previous Post

Rachael Renee’ Levasseur’s Experimental Work in Film Photography

Next Post

Image Gallery: Fujifilm X100F Samples

The Phoblographer © 2023 ——Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
  • Home
  • Our Staff
  • Editorial Policies
  • Media Kit
  • Membership
  • App Debug