UPDATE 12/17/2022: You're all amazing! You nailed our big stretch goal, blowing past 200 backers, and unlocked a 90 minute online analog photography class for all backers! I'll be in touch in the new year with schedule information and more details. Thank you so much!

Welcome to 35mm Love Letter, a digital how-to book and memoir about the glories of analog film photography, written by comic book writer, filmmaker, and photographer Greg Pak (hey, that's me!).

I'm probably best known for writing comic book classics like Planet Hulk, Darth Vader, and Mech Cadet Yu. But when I was in high school in Dallas in the 1980s, my brilliant mother, Jane Pak, gave me her Canon FTb and taught me how to shoot and develop 35mm black and white film.

Jane Pak in 1976 and Greg Pak in 1984.

Photography became an essential part of my life for the next 20 years, helping me develop an eye for frame, light, action, and the glorious, subtle details of the natural world and human expression.

35mm photographs taken by Greg Pak in the 1980s in high school and college featuring a swan, Dallas high school basketball players, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and a decapitated copperhead snake.

Like so many of us, I stopped shooting film when digital cameras became ubiquitous in the early 2000s. But after my mother died in 2021, I found myself poring over her luminous 35mm photographs and dug up the hundreds of rolls of film that I'd shot throughout high school, college, and beyond. And I fell in love all over again with the look and feel of analog film. The images just look right to me; they feel like true memory.

35mm photographs taken by Greg Pak in the 1980s and 1990s featuring Charles Pak, motorcyclists in Rome, and actor and activist Margot Kidder.

When I returned home after my mother's death, I rediscovered a few rolls of black and white film I'd shot over 20 years ago but never developed. I found a lab, got the rolls processed, and was stunned the next day to see these photographs of my mother.

The negatives were grainy and fogged from sitting for so long, but the images are beautiful, and my mother's calm presence feels so comforting and true to her and how she taught me to shoot that I'm tearing up even as I write this.

Within a few weeks, I picked up a used Canon TLb body and I've been shooting film again ever since.

During a deeply emotional time, nearly overwhelmed by grief and the pandemic and all the turmoil of this unbelievable decade, I’ve often told friends and family that 35mm film photography has helped save my heart and soul. You can see some of my writing on the subject in this massive Twitter thread and in the photography section of my blog.

Greg Pak in 1976, 1985, and 2022.

These old mechanical film cameras just feel right in my hands. Their big viewfinders are a beautiful match for my older eyes. The manual focus and exposure dials and rings give me the artistic control I’ve missed so much.

And the look and feel of film images, with their grain and latitude and depth of field control and analog quirk, just make me so happy.

Taking outdoor portraits of friends has been an especially lovely gift of human connection during the pandemic.

Comics creators Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad. Canon FTb, Canon nFD 50mm f1.4, Kodak Tri-X 400.

And the act of walking around with a camera while running errands means that instead of stressing myself out looking at my phone, I'm part of the actual physical world, connected with my surroundings, studying light and frame and color.

So 35mm Love Letter will be a celebration of the glories of analog film and why it means so much to me, illustrated by photos taken throughout my life -- as well as a deeply practical and thorough how-to book that details the cameras, films, and techniques I use every day, using actual photos I've taken as examples in order to be as specific and helpful as possible.

Canon T60, Canon nFD 135mm f3.5, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200.

I was a pretty decent photographer in high school and college. But I'm an old dog learning entirely new tricks these days, and I've got great tips to share about everything from buying and fixing cheap old cameras to leveling up my understanding of exposure to shooting pictures of the blood moon and tiny flowers.

Who's this book for?

Are you a complete newbie looking to pick up your very first analog film camera and start learning the basics? This book is for you!

Are you an experienced analog photographer looking for tips, equipment reviews, shared joy, and maybe a little inspiration from another shooter? This book is for you!

Are you someone who loves visual art and learning how it's made? This book is for you!

Do you just like a good story and want to know how looking through a camera lens has affected the life of one person? This book is for you!

Incredibly practical chapters may include:

• The Best 35mm Cameras for New Analog Photographers
• Overviews/Reviews of a Bunch of Classic Cameras and Lenses from Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, and Beyond
• Exposure Made Easy: Aperture, Shutter Speed, Film Speed, Depth of Field, How Metering Works, and Sunny 16
• My Favorite Films - Including Reviews of a Dozen Different 35mm Film Stocks, Both Color and Black and White
• Composition Tips - Using Light, Color, and Frame to Direct the Eye
• Portrait Shooting, Vérité Shooting, and Why Not Both
• Photographing Architecture and Landscapes
• Macro Photography and Telephoto Photography, a.k.a. Dandelions and the Blood Moon
• Learning to See in Black and White / Learning to See in Color
• Using Filters with Black and White and Color Film
• Some of My Greatest Mistakes and What I Learned from Them
• How to Buy a Used Camera Online
• Cleaning and Basic Rehabilitation of a "New" Vintage Camera
• Some More Ambitious (But Incredibly Satisfying) DIY Repairs for Common Vintage Camera Problems
• Things to Watch Out For: Radioactive Lenses, Mercury Batteries, Oh My!
• Half Frame Camera Fun
• Tips for Shooting Expired Film
• Shooting 35mm Film on a Budget
• Developing Black and White Negatives at Home Without a Darkroom
• Scanning Negatives and Basic Photoshop Tweaks/Techniques
• Troubleshooting Camera and Negative Problems

More personal and philosophical chapters may include:

• The Life of a High School and College Camera Nerd, a.k.a. Look at These Photos I Shot of Kurt Vonnegut in a Dallas Bookstore in 1985
• The Quiet Joy of Being Present: What My Mother’s Photography Taught Me about Everything Important
• Embracing the Gorgeousness of Mistakes
• Every Photo's a Self Portrait, Even the Ones That Aren't
• The Joy of Giving Cameras Away
• Analog Life: Rediscovering Calmness Through Simpler Machines

35mm Love Letter will lean into an analog, scrapbook, tactile, personal aesthetic, much like I Belong to You / Motherland and Cooking Will Break Your Heart, the last two crowdfunded books I’ve produced during the pandemic. Some pages may feel like they were torn from high school notebooks or college journals. You might find sketches, manually-typed poems, and hand-drawn diagrams interspersed with the text and photographs. Aesthetically, I’m aiming for a glorious tribute to analog life while taking advantage of the big 8 ½ x 11 inch pages to really showcase photos the way they deserve.

Like I Belong to You / Motherland and Cooking Will Break Your Heart, 35mm Love Letter will also be a tribute to my late mother, Jane Pak, a brilliant amateur photographer who taught me to shoot and helped shape my visual aesthetic and ethos. And yes, I said ethos, because she made photos of her children, her favorite subjects, that embodied unspoken principles of observation and participation in the world. She studied us while we studied the world. To understand her as a photographer is to understand her as a parent, educator, and empathetic human being, and I'm so grateful for the lessons she so seamlessly imparted.

I can't wait wait to share more in the book, although I know it'll wreck me to write it, in a good way. And fair warning: this might be the first how-to photography book to make you cry.

Rewards

The basic reward is a $15 digital PDF of the book, which I'm predicting will be somewhere between 150 and 200 pages. I'm not offering a physical version of the book through this campaign, and yes, I know how contradictory it may seem to offer a love letter to analog photography only in digital form. But as with my last book, Cooking Will Break Your Heart, we’re still in a pandemic and this feels like a great time to keep it simple for now. I absolutely hope to produce a physical edition in the future if this is successful, but making the first edition digital-only feels like the best way to guarantee I can get it done in a timely way as a solo project.

But if you're inclined and have a US shipping address, you can pick up postcards or signed physical copies of some of my previous books! These physical items should ship before the end of the year, shortly after the initial campaign concludes. I’m hoping but can’t guarantee we’ll get them to you before Christmas. The working vintage camera rewards should ship in January 2023. The plan is then to deliver the digital 35mm Love Letter book by the end of June 2023. 

There are also limited slots available for a three session zoom class in analog photography. And there are just three slots available for having your portrait taken in New York City on 35mm film. The classes and portraits will be scheduled for 2023 at times convenient for all the participants.

Thank you so much for your consideration and support!

About the Creator

Greg Pak is a writer best known for blockbuster comics like Planet Hulk, World War Hulk, and Darth Vader and beloved original series like Mech Cadet Yu and Ronin Island. Pak's previous Kickstarter projects include Code Monkey Save World, The Princess Who Saved Herself, and The Princess Who Saved Her Friends, all based on the songs of Jonathan Coulton and drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa. Pak also wrote (and Kickstarted) the how-to book Kickstarter Secrets and the cookbook memoir Cooking Will Break Your Heart.

For more about Pak, visit gregpak.com and check out his blog posts about photography at gregpak.com/category/photography.

Risks and Challenges

Pak is a comics veteran with years of experience making tough deadlines. He's already run six crowdfunding campaigns, which have given him the experience necessary to complete this project on time. Of course, unavoidable personal mishaps, acts of God, global disruption, or goofy mistakes could throw us off schedule, and we will keep backers updated if we do encounter any delays.