Now it starts! This is my first blogpost ever on my freshly created website “Light & Grain”. Uhh, … I can already hear you: Why another photo website? Any topic one can possibly think of is already covered in zillions of photo blog entries and online chats! There are so many professional photographers out there, so why should we bother to follow your humble beginnings, especially if you restrict yourself to film?
Or as Ted Forbes put it: “Nobody cares about your photography!” And I must admit that you’re right, but …
About a year ago I re-discovered photography which I was very passionate about as a youngster. Reading an airline magazine article about the crash of Polaroid and its revival under the flag of the Impossible project somehow sparked my interest in film photography again. Back home I started digging for my old cameras safely stowed away in a worn-out photobag in our attic. And there they were. I unearthed my first SLR, a fully mechanical Fujica STX-1, with its light protection foam disintegrated into a gluey substance. Its replacement of the time was a Nikon F301, which sported an integrated motordrive. I obviously kept the useless camera body despite its unexpected final breakdown in 1991. Being fed up with electronics in camera bodies I went fully mechanical again and invested in a Nikon FM2. With this camera I experienced the most rewarding time in photography so far. It was my day-to-day camera for more than a decade before I stopped shooting film. Digging deeper, I also found some old gems from the 1960s I had completely forgotten about. One was a well preserved Agfa Clack box camera, which once belonged to my father, the other one was a Voigtländer Vitomatic II rangefinder inherited from my wife’s grandpa. All these cameras had been waiting for me in the old bag ever since. They were the founding stock of what is now a small collection of analogue cameras, which I happily used to start shooting again. Some 50 rolls of small and medium format film later it’s now time to share my renewed passion with you.
Light & Grain 