I can't believe that I used to live here about 30 years ago. Brunswick, a very small town on the border of Virginia and Maryland.
I was about 10 years old and my parents ran the only grocery store in the town. After school I would go to the store and hang out and rummage around some old junk in the storage... Old tin beer signs, big poster boards with items that was on sale and other junk that would only fascinate a 10 year old child who recently immigrated from a country he hardly knew himself.
As I was deep in my mischief, I would always hear the horns of the freight trains that was less than a block away from the store. Me and my brother used to play around the tracks too. putting down coins or rocks on the tracks and hiding behind a bush before a big diesel locomotive would run by and smash it to a point where we couldn't find any traces of them after it was run over.
Its a fond memory for me. I've revisited that small town a few times now and things have not changed too much. Our store is an antique shop now. But you can still see the little "modifications" that my dad did three decades ago to the walls or the ceilings that the new owners did not bother to fix or replace. The years has not been too good to this town, as many other small towns across the US.
I borrowed a film camera from a friend of mine, a Bessa R3M. All mechanical, full manual rangefinder. I decided to take a walk in that old rail yard and give the camera a spin.
Very cluttered rail yard. For those of you who don't know me, I'm always attracted to these type of settings. Not so picturesque, not too glorious, not considered important. I don't know why I see beauty in these places. Since it was my first few rolls with the camera, I wanted to see how it handled back lighting. The 40 Nokton, I thought performed nicely. I like the streaking and the triangular pattern of the flare. Technically, not desirable but I like the look of in-camera flare.
Bessa R3M 40 1.4 MC Nokton. Kodak Portra 400
I was about 10 years old and my parents ran the only grocery store in the town. After school I would go to the store and hang out and rummage around some old junk in the storage... Old tin beer signs, big poster boards with items that was on sale and other junk that would only fascinate a 10 year old child who recently immigrated from a country he hardly knew himself.
As I was deep in my mischief, I would always hear the horns of the freight trains that was less than a block away from the store. Me and my brother used to play around the tracks too. putting down coins or rocks on the tracks and hiding behind a bush before a big diesel locomotive would run by and smash it to a point where we couldn't find any traces of them after it was run over.
Bessa R3M 40 1.4 MC Nokton. Kodak Portra 400
I borrowed a film camera from a friend of mine, a Bessa R3M. All mechanical, full manual rangefinder. I decided to take a walk in that old rail yard and give the camera a spin.
Bessa R3M 40 1.4 MC Nokton. Kodak Portra 400
Very cluttered rail yard. For those of you who don't know me, I'm always attracted to these type of settings. Not so picturesque, not too glorious, not considered important. I don't know why I see beauty in these places. Since it was my first few rolls with the camera, I wanted to see how it handled back lighting. The 40 Nokton, I thought performed nicely. I like the streaking and the triangular pattern of the flare. Technically, not desirable but I like the look of in-camera flare.
Bessa R3M 40 1.4 MC Nokton. Kodak Portra 400
I shot mostly stopped down. To my surprise, I liked the "everything-in-focus" look that I saw when looking through the viewfinder. I tend to favor shallow depth of field but with these series, I wanted more "point and shoot" feel. I guess subconsciously I wanted these pictures to look like it came from a person who was revisiting, as opposed to a professional photographer working. I didn't want to use any extreme camera angle because a visiter would not do that.
Bessa R3M 40 1.4 MC Nokton. Kodak Portra 400
I haven't shot 35mm film in a while. The low quality from small 35mm negs and chemical stains from the sprocket (I was going to complain to the lab about it, but I think it works here) and deep point and shoot like depth of field got me the look of nostalgia that I wanted.
Bessa R3M 40 1.4 MC Nokton. Kodak Portra 400
I didn't even clean out the dust spots. These could've been prints from your dad's old albums, complete with sloppy black borders.
It was fun shooting the Bessa. Of coarse, the photographer has the ultimate last word in how the picture will look, but I think the Bessa was nudging me into a certain look that was befitting this particular project.
Bessa R3M 40 1.4 MC Nokton. Kodak Portra 400
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