This is a follow-up piece to one I wrote here about what to look for when buying cheap compacts. In essence that was about the delights of $5 compacts with prime lenses, flash and auto wind. I collected these cameras from op-shops for a couple of years, kept a few and gave the rest to friends of my daughters.
This is part of a project I’ve had going for a while. It’s about aesthetics and observation. I’m trying to strip everything I can out of the process of making an image and then see what’s left.
Each summer for the past thirty-odd years we’ve spent a couple of weeks here at the same beach.
The idea is that every now and again I’ll walk out of the front of our house and stand in the same spot near the sea, point the camera in the same direction and make a frame.
I was on holidays down the coast (as we say around here) and because the plan was to just relax I took a roll of black and white film and a Point and Shoot with me. I had a roll of HP5 in my little Canon Snappy LX II. It’s one of my favourite cameras because it is so simple. No focus, and it reads only 400 ISO on its DX. Anything else it defaults to 100. This is cool – because if you take it to the beach and put some Portra 160 in it it will shoot it at 100. Anything 400 will get shot at 400.
OK – here’s my #fullrollfriday. I love this concept. There’s so much to think about. Why do we make photos? What is our intent?
How do we gauge the success of an image? Is it tied purely to purpose, or can we hope for something that lies beyond the specific and is universal?
All that stuff and more went through my mind as I read the first post in the #FullRollFriday series.
