There’s been a stirring in my world that’s got me pretty excited. On my trip to Louisiana a couple of weeks ago, I finally put my first roll of film through the Yashica Mat 124G. The subject of focus was an old structure that gives me an incredible amount of inspiration– Louisiana’s old state capital. It is one of the most unique buildings in the city of Baton Rouge, and in my opinion, the entire United States. Every time I visit the city of Baton Rouge, I have to park downtown and get up close and personal with this marvel.
Being my first experience using a TLR, it was quite amazing looking down into the ground-glass viewfinder and having the building seem to pop out in 3-D with a turn of the focusing knob. There will be many more adventures with my twin lens reflex cameras. The negatives from my first medium-format visit to the old state capital processed beautifully. In the next week, I hope to get some of these negatives scanned so I can show you just how clear and amazing these photos are.
I have more black-and-white film on the way, and even ordered some color for the Diana F+. Now that I’ve gone through most of the film I stockpiled in the past, it’s time to start restocking. I’ll be moving to 400 ISO film this time, as an experiment. I’ve been told by some experts in the field that 400 is not what it used to be. It’s not the sacrifice I always thought it to be in the past. My preference up to this point was 100 ISO or less. Once this film arrives, it should offer me more versatility, since it won’t need as much light and open aperture to yield great shots.
For the sake of having some photos that seem at least somewhat lomo (focus on the word “seem), here are a couple of photos I took using the Hipstamatic app on my phone. I don’t particularly care for the idea of a phone app trying to “copy” the lomo effect, but I’m secure enough in using it since I know it is still vastly inferior to light on film. If they hadn’t turned out as cool as they did, I wouldn’t even bother posting such a thing. It’s not Diana or Holga “quality,” but it was still fun. Hope you enjoy.
A simple sky shot. I love the distortion of the sky and sunlight.
A pigeon meandering around the courtyard at Ansley Mall.
Another shot of one of the pigeons. I was going to crop this one, but the “buckling” of the brick and tile was too fun to tinker with.
Until my next post, hope you have a great week.
Fotografia 