Film diary: How my Yashica made me look even closer to the details.

Hi there!

Today I decided to share with you some of the shots I’ve made since August 2018 with my dear Yashica Mat24g. It’s my first medium format camera and it can be loaded with 120mm film. I think it’s fair to show you the results with the right timeline, because you’ll some differences between the photos. I didn’t knew how to use it from the first day to be honest, there’s some blurry photos, last year I had a film with most of the photos totally burned and I think my Yashica not only made me look even closer to the details but also made me learn a bit more about composition and being patient with myself when failing completely with my photos.

First film used: August 2018

I won’t post all the photos I took with this first film but yeah, most of them were blurry. I like in particular these two, especially the second one because it was a total accident. I was showing the camera to one of my friends, Diana, and she accidentely took this photo. And when I saw the result of it I was surprised, first of all because I thought the result was completely black, all photo, since it was pretty late at night and we were in the middle of the beach, I thought the lights were far away for the camera to capture… the other reason I was surprised was because of it’s composition. That random flash of night going across the face of our friend, the shadows. I really like this one, even thought it was not taken by me and a total accident. I guess some accidents happen for good.

October and November 2018

On October and November, I’ve decided to risk a bit more on the portraits, especially to understand a bit more the camera and how can I get better results. To be honest, I find these ordinary portraits. Between work, between walks with friend, in my rooftop, and in other situations I created them... And I think it’s cool to share this with you because it’s important to understand that every photo doesn’t necessary have to be perfect. Or even the most amazing thing you’ll ever see. Or the most creative thing. Especially when you’re learning a bit more of it. It’s important to understand where can we improve in our way to look at things. And again, to be honest with you, I find even today, almost two years working with this camera, a challenge to shoot portraits with it.

January 2019 in black and white

Playing with reflections, bring the camera around, capturing emptiness. All photos were shot with a black and white Ilford film. I used two of these during the month. It was my first black and white film with that camera. I guess I was trying to escape the ordinary and looking more around me. Playing hide and seek, thinking how reality can always transforms itself into a monochromatic world and still be interesting. To achieve a pleasuring black and white photo, in my opinion, it’s a challenge and I understood that even more after seeing and analysing these.

January 2019 in color

February 2019

So, since I had the wonderful opportunity to work for a week in Paris, Istanbul and Amsterdam, of course I would bring little Yashica with me. The real work to do was in Istanbul with Catarina Pereira, we were working for TopAtlântico. And we had two flight scales to do: Paris before Istanbul, Amsterdam after Istanbul. And soon I’ll write about that here on the blog, but yeah, I brought my Yashica with me and these are some of the results. The last photo was actually taken one or two days before the trip and I really love this photo, for its sweetest and strangeness. You see the flowers, someone standing in there… and I don’t know why, I feel nostalgic for many different reasons by looking at it.

April and May 2019

June 2019

I want to finish this article for now with June. This month was a really happy one in the year of 2019. And I guess that reflected a lot in the way I captured the sensibility and naturality of things. I think I’m still learning how to shoot with this camera. In my opinion I still need to understand how can I take photographs that really speaks for myself and how I feel. Working with film is always great to understand yourself, others and train your vision. Train our eyes the way they see the world around and the way they see ourselves. Train ourselves to be patient with our limits and flaws. As we grow, we need to forgive ourselves and the way we fail. In these simple things and the ones that really have an impact in our life. At least for me, working film is a great way to look careful and to appreciate the things that will be gone by tomorrow.

See you soon,
Cate.