The Mariners will wait, but not forever
Expired film, late first games, and walk-offs over the radio
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
Primer on expired film (according to thedarkroom.com):
As film ages:
Sensitivity to light decreases.
Colors shift (in color films).
Grain becomes more noticeable.
Contrast flattens, making images look muddy or dull.
Underexposure becomes more likely, especially with poorly stored film.
THUS
Overexpose by 1 stop per decade past expiration (e.g., shoot ISO 400 film at 200 if it’s 10 years old).Develop normally – don’t push or pull unless you’re very experienced.
Bracketing exposures can help find the sweet spot.
Even fresh B&W film handles overexposure well due to its great latitude so don’t be worried to give expired film extra light
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
Coming into this last week, there were two things I hadn’t done since 2025: shoot expired film, and go to a Mariners game.
For the former- I’d spent too much of my time focusing on honing my analog craft with ‘up to date’ film stocks. I wanted to work on development and printing and didn’t want any extraneous things bringing down my experiential/knowledge gain.
For the latter- I usually try to go to my first game of the year with my mother. But my sister conveniently had a baby right around Opening Day, so she’s spent much of the first two months of the season visiting and being a grandma*.
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
So I picked up a couple rolls of expired black and white film, knowing I was going to come to a Mariners game with my buddy Shane. Black and white film (plus being expired) feels fitting for a baseball game, especially my first game of the year. And with the confluence of emotions I’d been feeling recently, combined with the outpouring of emotions I feel when I’m at a game (especially my first game of the year), everything made sense flowing together.
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
Street photography at a baseball game, though, is basically people-watching. It’s learning how to be comfortable pointing a lens at someone (whether or not they know you’re doing so- but, like, don’t be creepy) and taking a picture if one shows up for you. And to add- when you’re sitting in the nosebleeds with only a 50mm lens, you need to get creative with the kind of shots you’re looking for.
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
And in the case of where/when we were sitting, it just turned into ‘see who is currently here’.
My buddy and I are old-school baseball fans. We like to arrive early to games to take in the atmosphere, chat, and just soak in the stadium. That PLUS it being a Monday PLUS it being a game against a not-great Mets team meant that even early arrivals were going to be scarce. There were no stadium-wide giveaways—just a Pride Night jersey special for being the first day of June—and school was/is still in session (at the time of this writing, anyway). So seats were sparsely filled, and what action on the field would not have shown up well. So it goes.
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
So instead, we get snaps around the 300-level concourse! And I got to take a picture of, in action, one of my favorite phenomena- the different jerseys people wear to a game where they all are rooting for the same team.
In this picture you have a Ken Griffey Jr jersey, a Cal Raleigh* jersey, and one of the aforementioned Pride Night ticket special giveaway jerseys. All Mariners fans, but all wearing something different. And this doesn’t even acknowledge the bevy of fans who wear jerseys of different teams who aren’t even playing in the game. They just want to wear a jersey as a way of saying “hey, I know ball”. It’s one of my absolute favorite low-level and mostly harmless ways people seek out community.
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
Of course I still feel like a weirdo catching pics like this, but that’s just something I need to get over. There are baseball games afoot, and life being lived right in front of me! (And you, but I hope you already know this.)
The moral of my brief opining about expired film? This roll worked out. Not all of them do! Expired black and white film is more than likely to be successful, but even then it is purely a ‘luck of the draw’ situation.
What helped in my case was recognizing that, as the film was at least 10 years old, I needed to ‘stop down’ the metering on my camera. Me getting into the granular details on what that means isn’t necessarily meant for this blog (and I linked something above that could help if you are really interested!), but basically: for whatever number is written on the box (in this case, 400), divide in half for every ten years of age the roll has. Because, again, the light sensitivity is lessened with age. So you want to shoot it ‘slower’, or just with the expectation that it’ll take in less light than you’d normally expect it to.
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
I really didn’t know what to expect from this film. Not just because it’s expired, but also because it’s a rare-ish kind of film called ‘chromogenic’. Basically, it’s black and white film that is developed the same way you develop color film. So the chemistry is different, the process is different, AND it’s expired.
Now talk about the game, Aaron.
Right!
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
|
It was my first time seeing the furthest right banner in person.
I love baseball games. I love the Mariners. Devotees of this blog (and just general Seattle pop culture-zeitgeist stuff) will note that the Mariners last season made it closer than they ever had before to the World Series. So being here was always going to be emotional- it reminded me of all of the great moments (and a few of the sad ones).
And this game was so emblematic of the Mariners I’d come to know and love. Sterling starting pitching performance, middling-to-mediocre offense based on solo home runs. (But no strikeouts, weirdly.)
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
But/as it was par for the proverbial course, though, it felt like home. And after some more back-and-forth trading of solo home runs, the game was tied going into the 9th inning. I told my friend that if it went to extras, I needed to leave. I’m an old man (not really) and I don’t love being out late on school nights.
Expired Kodak 400CN, metered at 100 ISO, shot on Canon Elan II at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington; scanned/developed at Speedy ePhoto in Parkland, Washington.
And in spite of how hard it was to leave that view, and my friend, and the Mariners, I knew I had to go.
I left as the beginning of the 10th inning started. By the time I’d made it to my car (20 minutes away on foot), the Mariners had successfully walked-off victoriously. Just one of those things.
Wrapping-up thoughts:
Asterisk/footnote number 1: my mom has more than just the one grandkid, but my sister lives in Denver, and traveling as a grandparent is different than being one for grandkids who live in the same city!
Asterisk/footnote number 2:
That Cal Raleigh highlight I linked? I was there for it. I’m not sure what an exorcism is like, but… that one felt like an exorcism. 45k people at once, screaming their demons out at the top of their lungs. The clip still makes me cry, and again, I was there.
It was fun taking two different rolls of black and white film into the park with me. I may not post about the other roll, but I got a lot of good images that night.
It’s going to be a chaotic summer, so I’ve stopped posting/publishing a week before it shows up on my threads account. I’m still caught up with posts on Threads, though. Just wanted to apologize to anyone who may have subscribed with the presupposition that I would have had a blog post last week. I would have! But then I remembered I was going to this game, and I wanted to save the proverbial powder. I am still planning posting every week, just (technically) took last week off.
That’s all for now!