Hallo film lovers. I would like to open this month by addressing some criticism I have received recently, which demanded I recognise all forms of analogue photography and not just film. I am sorry that some of you feel so strongly about this and althouh my path is set for this year, I will think about changing things around next year. Maybe.

I hope you enjoy this month’s predictions. I have a feeling that some of you might not be happy with what’s about to transpire over the month ahead.

~ Bazza

 

Cancer

You’ve never really thought of yourself as an animal lover, especially after that incident with your Aunt’s dog and your new trousers, but a dense particulate filter hazing the second quadrant of Asda minor this month will have you thinking differently.

A constant stream of TV concerned with Pets and Vets will have you convinced that not only could a pet be a useful emotional crotch, but also a perfect photographic model that would never say no to you or critique your results. Of course, there is still the problem of you being an unreliable carer for yourself, let alone another life form, so perhaps it’s best to start small, say a tin of Tuna, and build up from there.

This month’s lucky wind is Zephyr, and listen out for “China in your hand” by T’Pau to be in with a chance of wondering where all the redheads go in a heatwave.

 

 

Leo

Be mindful in August, especially when it comes to that massive ego of yours. It’s not always about you, Leo. For that, you’ll have to wait next month when the sun is in your house. Until then, you have a visit to a safari park coming up in your near future. Well, a safari park or more likely, a petting zoo.

Watching repeats of Grand Designs has done nothing to dampen the growing feeling that interior architecture photography is the next big thing but you need to ask yourself if that 400mm lens you were eying up in July is going to be the best tool for the job. Only time and endless rejection can tell.

This month’s luck cereal is a single Weetabix biscuit soaked overnight in nana’s “special cooking wine” and your lucky hedge is a privet trimmed into an inappropriately suggestive shape for a Royal Palace.

 

 

Virgo

The Sun is entering its Reggae phase this month, which means big things for you (along with haunting echoes of “Babylon an ting” in the cleaning supplies aisle of your local Tesco). After months of vacillating over potential photo projects, the decision will become clear.

In hindsight, you’ll wonder how it never occurred to you before – CHEESE! You can be the best in the business at shooting cheese, the very top of the pile of people who shoot cheese, in short, the big cheese of Big Cheese. From Halloumi with a Hasselblad to Brie with a Bronica, Leerdammer with a Leica to Feta with a Fed, the world of international cheese portraiture is an untapped dairy mine just waiting to be plundered! Just stay away from Ogleshield with an ‘olga. No one wants to see that.

Your questionable style choice this month is Crocs, and a man called Kevin is either a future love interest or an undercover tax inspector. Or both. Tax inspectors need love too. Probably more than most.

 

 

Libra

Whether your planning to stay at home on those stinking pyjamas you call “comfort clothes”, or hosting 2018’s most decadent birthday bash for your inappropriately named rabbit, August has buckets of photographic opportunity for you to indulge yourself in.

Fortune also smiles on you in the form of every single unanswered text of the last 18 months suddenly being replied to. You’ll finally get the answers you’ve been seeking, although they will inevitably lead to further questions that will take another 18 months to hear back on – take the highs with the lows.

With your birthday coming up soon-ish, it’s time to put an order in for the camera-shaped cake. After having wanted one for nearly four years, it’s time for you to accept that the only way you’re going to get one is by ordering it yourself. Pro tip: book the cake under another name and get it delivered so you can pretend to be surprised when you open it in front of Roger.

This month’s lucky trimester is the fifth and your lucky cosmetic is CoverGirl Fresh Complexion Under-Eye Concealer – rated 7.8/10 by the world’s top MUAs (source: the Uncyclopedia).

 

 

Scorpio

August is a good month for you to take positive financial steps. These steps will be straight to the bank to ask for a massive loan in preparation for the #savepackfilm project releasing hundreds of boxes of peel-apart film onto the market.

You’ll convince both your bank manager and yourself that this is an investment guaranteed to pay dividends, but once you’ve got these boxes of photographic gold bullion in your sweaty palms you’ll find it impossible to ever find a shot worthy of the film. The packs will languish in a specially built shrine until decades after all the chemicals have dried out and will end their life as kindling on your funeral pyre.

At least the flames will be pretty colours.

Your persistent itch this month is on your left foot, and your lottery numbers will be revealed in a moderately flattened Chelsea Bun.

 

 

Sagittarius

Sweet potato is the devil’s food. That and other nonsense will fill your mind this month while the important task of documenting your camera collection goes unfinished. Snap out of it.

You’re a dreamer and yes, you don’t really think of worldly possessions that much but this is a chore that needs both time and attention and you’ll feel better doing it. Brownie points for adding a column that notes the batteries your cameras need.

This isn’t the only dilemma you will face this month, at some time during the second half of August you will be faced with making a choice between going wide, or ultrawide. The runes tell me that cropped ultrawide gives you more flexibility but this is a choice that no-one apart from you can help with. Perhaps if you got that list finished, you’d be able to tell if there was a focal-length-overlap…don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This month’s lucky music is pretty much anything from Taytay and your lucky powdered vegetable is corn.

 

 

Capricorn

The early part of this month will be characterised by deep feelings of warmth, satisfaction and anticipation after the completion of many long months of planning and preparation for a project you care deeply about.

The latter half of this month will be characterised by deeper feelings of frustration, angst, despair and fury, as you share your plans with others who instantly tear them a new arsehole. You eventually realise that the problem with trying to do something nice for people is that, at a certain level, you do have to deal with people, who always spoil everything nice.

Parthenocissus tricuspidata “Veitchii” is your lucky long Latin name, and Sylvester McCoy is this month’s lucky Doctor.

 

 

Aquarius

It’s time to flex those creative muscles by trying to draw your favourite cartoon character in suggestive poses. You will most certainly fail but that’s not a bad thing considering what Disney would do to you if they ever saw your efforts.

In more constructive news, your inherent feelings of love towards your fellow humans and animals will be best channelled into pictures which contain the sin, be it as the main focus of the frame, or flare creeping in from the sides. The subject isn’t as important as that way all of that lovely flare will represent the rays of your love spreading out to the world around you.

IMPORTANT: LOVE WILL BLIND YOU. DON’T LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN.

Your lucky sunglasses are anything rated for use in a solar eclipse and your lucky song is Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.

 

 

Pisces

Your handicraft skills will come to the fore this month as inspiration strikes for a grand new project.

After watching one too many youtube videos and a short but costly trip to the hardware store you’ll feel ready to tackle your most ambitious camera creation yet. Previous attempts have mostly involved getting a metal tin and poking a hole in it, and even one of those ended up with an emergency trip to the vets for the cat, so don’t be too disappointed when this ends in epic failure, and most likely the burning of your shed to the ground.

Excellent+++ is this month’s camera rating and 465 is part of a phone number which will, when completed and rung, bring you great riches!

To hear the rest of the number put your ear up to an Elephant’s anus and be very, very quiet.

 

 

Aries

EMULSIVE Film Zodiac - Aries: Kodak Brownie 2a
EMULSIVE Film Zodiac – Aries: Kodak Brownie 2a

As the head of the zoological table, you have certain responsibilities, prime of them being to stop whining about every small setback and grow a pair…

…of brass knuckles to beat them all into sobbing, bloodied submission.

Early August sees the eighth moon entering your third home, which brings with it dilemmas that can only be solved by spending money – what comes first, the lens or the camera? This is a question that only you can answer with the aid of a large bottle of peach schnapps and an open eBay browser window at 1am on the 4th. The answer will be clear the following morning.

This month’s lucky chocolate are those weirdly moreish Daim/Dime chocolates from IKEA (the ones that look like Rolos with the caramel squashed out). Your lucky furniture is the new CÄÄMERÄ glass-fronted shelf system.

 

 

Taurus

Your health will be on your mind this month. Summer holidays beckon and with them the hardest question to face any photographer – which camera to take? Large medium or small format? SLR, rangefinder, TLR, point and shoot or instant? Colour or black and white film?

In the end, your indecision will lead to you either missing your holiday completely or taking two of everything, one for colour and one for black and white. By the end of your week away, you’ll have compressed your spine by a good inch and the physio bills for getting you walking upright again will necessitate you selling so much gear that for your next holiday you won’t have to worry about making any choices.

Your lucky colour this month is sewer brown, and 400mg Ibuprofen is your best friend.

 

 

Gemini

Gems crave variety. You literally need it to continue existing. As strange as that may seem to others you and I know this to be true. You don’t stick to a particular aesthetic for long and tend to mix-and-match. It’s what you do and why we love you. It’s also why the rest of us consider you to be skittish, temperamental, strange, aloof, non-committal, indecisive and above all else flippers of the biggest flops. But we still love you all the same and the trail of artistic detritus you leave in your wakes is what feeds the rest of us to – quite frankly – exceed your vision.

Consider it a community service, especially this month, where the angle of Mars’ dangle in relation to Uranus opens a window to your unconscious creative zone. This means the creative possibilities are literally endless. You are limited by your own desire to conform, so, for the next 31 days, don’t be burdened by the idea of what you should do and think instead about what you could do.

Your lucky food additive is Sunset Yellow (E110) and your lucky Lego piece is that one that looks like a little house and always gets jammed right in the heel.

 


 

Thank you everyone for reading again. I would like you all to think about how these predictions have changed the course of your lives these past eight months and let me know by email, or in the commentary section which follows below.

I look forward to bringing light into your lives.

~ Barry “Stardust” Gibb

 

 

Share your knowledge, story or project

The transfer of knowledge across the film photography community is the heart of EMULSIVE. You can add your support by contributing your thoughts, work, experiences and ideas to inspire the hundreds of thousands of people who read these pages each month. Check out the submission guide here.

If you like what you’re reading you can also help this passion project by heading over to the EMULSIVE Patreon page and contributing as little as a dollar a month. There’s also print and apparel over at Society 6, currently showcasing over two dozen t-shirt designs and over a dozen unique photographs available for purchase.

Similar stuff on EMULSIVE

3 responses to “August 2018 film photography horoscope – ‘mystic’ help to better photography”

  1. The scary thing is it was pretty spot on….. I think the ultra-wide it was talking about was my bel… https://t.co/ehX9bCvODt

  2. I’m tired of taking small setbacks gracefully. Some brass knuckles sounds like a change of pace.

  3. How’s your mullet from last month coming along?

 

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from EMULSIVE

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Discover more from EMULSIVE

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading