This is how I remember that day: it was a day when the university of my town received the foundation stone for a campus of its own. And in the far west US army occupied the capital city of Baghdad in Iraq on the 22nd day of its invasion of the country. It was also the day when I got my first camera: a very basic Kodak VR35 point-and-shoot.
In many years of amateur (at best) photography, I’ve almost entirely used digital since I started with a compact in 2005 or 2006. But recently I’ve been increasingly keen to try going ‘analogue’. Largely as a result of reading 35mmc, I might add!
I already had a nice Olympus Trip 35. It was a present to me from my parents, a year or two, I think, before I went digital. Back then, the cost of film and development, as well as not really understanding how it worked – at the time I would have been 11 or 12 – meant I didn’t do much with it. It sat in a cupboard for the next 15 years (give or take a few) while I progressed through digital compacts, bridge cameras, and finally to mirrorless where I’ve been for the last decade or so. It doesn’t really seem that long.
My name is Greg, I live in France, I’m 37, I run a wineshop, but we’re not here to discuss about all that. We’re here because 15 years ago, more or less, I quit photography, and now I’m back at it, after so many years. What happened? What got me back into it? Life happened, all the way.
Back then
15 years ago, I was studying anthropology and sociology, living in the countryside of the south west of France. Nice and cool life you might think. Yet, I was suffering depression. I had to stop a first passion, dance, because of an injury. So I was trying to find something that could help me express what I had to say at the time. And photography it was, for a certain time at least.
This story begins with an afternoon drive through the local countryside accompanied by my spouse. The air was lovely and warm. The skies were clear. The weather was what we expect for late June in Ohio after enduring six months of gray flannel skies that accompany our winters and much of the spring. As we …
Breaking Digital Habits and Relearning Film With a Leica IIIf – By Christopher DellaCorte Read More
I can’t remember how it all started, I never even thought about taking pictures, but then one day, on that plane to New York in 2017, something changed.
I was going on a trip with my first camera, a Canon 1200d (not even mine, borrowed from my sister) just to take some photo-memories in better quality than what my old phone could produce.
