A Glimpse into My Photo Hoarding – By Larissa Almeida

I feel as if I first should introduce myself. Hi I’m Larissa, I grew up surrounded by pictures. My mum had always loved taking photos of me and my brother, the family and our surroundings. I remember being around the age of 12 and finding my mum’s old film camera and politely asking if I could use it, she said yes and that was my first (short) outing with a camera. The pictures, from what I can recall did not turn out that great, but for some reason it sparked an interest.

Pretty much ever since that I have always carried a camera, the first camera being a Sony Cyber-shot Superzoom Compact Camera. As I got older, I thought it would not be wise to carry a camera like this around, especially during nights out, so I got the classic boots disposable cameras. After a good couple of years I decided to find a point and shoot on eBay; a Pentax Espio (something) super zoom.

This camera is super lightweight easy to carry and when you’re out on a night out probably intoxicated and struggling to focus your eyes, the auto focus isn’t bad either. The only downfall with this camera is the viewfinder, it’s not attached to the lens so when you look through the viewfinder the subject looks in the centre but once you’ve developed and printed the image out you realise the subject is actually very much leaning off centre.

On an outing to Bristol we found a car boot sale and to my surprise I found a film camera. It was the Minolta dynax 3000i. After a rather thorough look at it, the camera seemed like it was never used, I asked the seller how much, he said £3. I then asked if he knew whether the camera worked. He replied with “I dunno, that’s why it 3 quid”. Long story short best £3 I’ve spent, I’m still adjusting to it and its size, but overall this bulky camera is really lovely, and I enjoy being able to manual focus.

The pictures you’ll see below are of what I like to capture with the film cameras I have. I’m a bit of a photo hoarder and the habit I started at the age of 12 is still going strong. To this day I carry a camera with me most days, and the days I don’t I feel as if something is missing. You could say I use my camera as a bit of a barrier and comfort blanket for those situations where I feel socially awkward. I do not mind being known as the person with the camera or the girl who always takes pictures.

The reason I don’t mind, especially over this year, is that I have grown a lot of self confidence in my techniques and the outcomes I create (even though most of the outcomes are not perfect and have a lot of room for improvement) which just fuels the motivation to keep creating. It’s also a great conversation starter for when you’re in new environments.

I don’t shoot with any particular film, just what I can afford at the time. So it varies from Kodak to Fuji to Ilford.

Due to my university facilities being open recently I’ve been taking full advantage and I have been developing my own film as well as scanning it in myself (excuse the dust particles). There have been some bad outcomes and some happy accidents, but I have definitely learnt a lot and hope to keep improving my technique. I hope when you looked at some of my photos above you got as much or some enjoyment from them, like I do.

More of my work can be seen on Instagram @larissa.a.photography or @lil.lariss.filmzzz

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