5 Portraits of… my Girlfriend in Rome with a Pentax ME Super

This time two years ago I decided to shoot my first roll of film in almost a decade. It only took that one roll to get me hooked on photography again, and since then I’ve bought and sold my way through the inevitable attack of G.A.S, tried a dozen film stocks and generally obsessed about the process and the art of taking pictures. One year later the fever has subsided and photography has found its place in the rhythm of my life, and that place is mostly when I’m on holiday. But sometimes I find myself in a location which, although inspiring, I find hard to photograph. In these situations it helps to bring my subject with me, which is where my girlfriend enters the scene.

I found it difficult to do my usual street photography in Rome. Although Rome is very picturesque, whenever I found a good shot there was invariably a tourist standing in my way. I don’t like taking pictures of tourists because they’re the same everywhere you go- it says nothing about Rome to have a picture of tourists standing around, looking at things. They could be standing around looking at things in Venice or London or Tokyo. Tourists don’t evoke a sense of a location, they don’t exist in the fabric of a place like locals do. So letting my inner Masahisa Fukase shine through, I instead used Rome as a backdrop to take some portraits of my girlfriend. After all- If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

For this trip I tried to keep things simple. One camera, one roll of Ilford HP5+ and… well I would like to say one lens but to my shame I brought three ( 50mm f1.7, 28mm f2.8, and 130mm f3.5). Juggling three lenses was extremely cumbersome and not at all suited to my tripod-free, spontaneous approach, so in future I plan to either buy a zoom, or stick with just one prime. For this trip I think the 50mm f1.7 would have done the job in 90% of the shots. I knew this would be the case, but a kind of madness comes over me when I’m packing my camera gear for a trip. I suspect I’m not the only one.

The game I played in Rome was to escape the crowds and chase the light. The five portraits were all taken on the same day, which started with drizzle before exploding with beautiful sunlight late in the afternoon, leaving me running around frantically looking for shots before the sun went down. By carefully framing the shots to avoid catching stray tourists the pictures have an old Hollywood look, as if the empty ruins of the colosseum were a film set. A few of the shots definitely have a theatrical, almost melodramatic air which I really like. The combo of HP5 and the Pentax me Super has served me well once again, and with my model by my side I’m always prepared for a nice bit of holiday photography.

You can see some photos of things other than my girlfriend on my instagram.

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