When something becomes your living, you have to fight very hard (no matter what people say) to remember why you first started doing what you do. Photography for me started on my Dad’s manual Pentax ME super on family holidays – main reason being I didn’t want to be in the photo – I took the camera and problem solved! A big part of that thrill came in having a limitation of shots on a roll of film (24 or 36) so you become very selective on what you take. Then there’s the wait for the developing, anxious as to whether your estimated exposures have worked. The first look through the shots as they arrive in the post or you collect them from the lab, or you develop the film in the darkroom… is exciting!
So, being a digital user in my professional work now – all this has gone. You can’t shoot without reviewing each image, adjusting then shooting again, and again…. and again. Upload the photos to the world within minutes. Therefore I recently purchased a film camera to get me back to that old feeling. For the work I do, I can’t rely on this to shoot professionally – and the cost of film and materials would make it an expensive shoot. So welcome to the collection the Bronica ETRS, a medium format (basically bigger negatives) film camera from the 1980s. Completely manual focus, aperture, shutter etc and it feels like a piece of engineering! Using Ilford HP5 400 film, my aim is to use this to capture friends/family/places that are important to me. One shot only, if someone blinks then that’s the shot. These shots will be full of imperfections but then that is the beauty of it, the real way to ‘capture the moment’.
They’ll be uploaded here over time (or a selection of) completely unedited – just as they come from the negative scan, let me know what you think – good or bad comments welcome : )
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