December streets of Lund
Just before the Christmas and New Year holidays I had some errands to do in Lund, so I strapped my shoulder bag with cameras onto myself and got on the bus into town. The weather was actually quite alright and I could get a nice backlit photo or two before the early winter sunset changed that and turned everything a much darker shade and less interesting light. Still it was nice to grab a few black and white, rather contrasty street photos again since it had been a while since I had done those.
The light is back!
On March 2 I took my Fujifilm XT-3 and a 35 mm lens with me to the monthly photographers’ get-together in Malmö, Sweden where we fill our bellies with various delicacies on offer at the Coffee Square restaurant (I strongly recommend it to anyone in the vicinity!) and then we do a little stroll together for an hour…and sometimes a bit longer. It’s a very nice way to see old friends and geek out about photography and whatever else we can come up with to talk about. And eat some good food…which I’ve already mentioned I suppose…moving on!
Night Streets
I wrote in the last blog post that I didn’t really have any plans for what I am going to do with my 2025 photographic or creative year and that still stands. No clue yet…however I also wrote that I’d try to get out there more to take more pictures, even if it is still pretty meh around here as far as light and weather goes. It IS getting better though, the days are getting longer and you don’t risk freezing body parts off when out and about (provided you wear sensible clothing of course!).
Out in the streets of Skåne
This summer, after I came home from my delightful (but too short) trip to the US I’ve gone on a few little “day trips” to do some street photography here and there, but not to the extent I used to do before the pandemic. I guess I’m still trying to re-kindle that flame, that urge to spend hours upon hours out on the streets, snapping hundreds of photos, then you find those rare gems among them during editing. I’m getting there though…step by step I suppose.
Sunny days are their own reward!
Slowly but surely the light is returning to the northern hemisphere and when we had a rare sunny day I just had to enjoy the last few hours of it on the streets of Malmö before my photo club’s bi-weekly get-together. The shadows were pretty harsh, but I enjoyed working with them, rather than cursing them for “interfering” with my images. That sunlight was almost warm on the face…so who am I to complain about it?
Analog days are here again
Ever since the modern plague descended upon us in 2020 I’ve put one aspect of my photography on the back burner, namely analog photography. It wasn’t an intentional choice in any way, in fact it was something that dawned on me several months into it. “Tomas, you’re not shooting your old film cameras…is that something we want to change?” It turned out that, nope I was fine with letting them and my rolls of film in the fridge be for the time being. Of course I didn’t think we’d still be in pandemic mode (sort of) at the start of 2023, I figured we’d be back to normal long ago!
First photos of the year
Last weekend was the first outing with a camera for 2023 and I went to my usual monthly Photographers' Brunch in Malmö, Sweden. We're a group of 10-20 photographers that meet up for a Sunday morning brunch followed by a slow stroll through the streets with our cameras, ready to take a picture or two.
Spring photos in black and white...isn't that against the rules?
Like just about all Swedes I’ve enjoyed the warmer days and greener surroundings that we’ve had since the start of April (although we did get some snow flurries just the other week), so of course I’ve been out and about with my camera to portray the changing season.
Therefore it might seem strange that all the shots in this post are in black and white, and not showing ANY of the green colors of the landscape. However I wanted to experiment with the Acros film simulation on my Fujifilm XT-3 camera and see how contrasty you could make the images, and thereby focusing the viewer’s attention on shapes and different shades, rather than saturated colors.
Out in the streets...again
These past two years of “plague” I haven’t been very good at keeping up my street photography skills…for the simple and to me rather obvious reason that it is unwise to be among too many people, that it’s better to maintain a good distance to potential sources of infection. However, now that the numbers are reasonably low (yes, I know they’re climbing a little bit again) I decided that I needed a stroll through the city of Malmö. The weather was good and I had reasons to be in the city anyway later that day so I thought why not?
Ridiculously wide images...part two
This is my second blogpost with images in a unique format from the Hasselblad X Pan II camera I’ve got on loan for a month. I haven’t shot quite as much as I thought I would, since the whole world pretty much descended into Corona territory…but I did squeeze in a few rounds with it before we were all told to stay far away from each other, and I have a few rolls still yet to both shoot and develop, so my guess is that there will be a few more posts with images in this ultrawide format in the future!
Ridiculously wide images!
When you start going down the rabbit hole of analog photography you can develop what is known as G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), where you want to buy ALL the cameras of ALL the different types out there because they’re just so cheap! At least they used to be. Nowadays analog cameras are going up in price at a somewhat alarming rate (for those who want to buy new stuff all the time). Personally I am quite happy with the cameras I have at the moment so I don’t feel the need to hunt for any new gear…except perhaps a lens or two for my medium format camera. But that is for a later date.
An hour on the streets
Earlier this week I had about an hour between errands and an activity at my photo club so I decided to head out onto the streets of Malmö for some street photography. I felt a bit rusty since I’d not done a whole lot of that type of shooting for a while (camera in repair shop, shitty weather etc), so it was a perfect time to get back into it. Many people were on their way home from work out in the streets so there were ample opportunities to catch something (or someone) interesting!
Medium format at the coast
There’s been a bit of a lull in photography for me in the last two weeks, due to the weather being crap and a general feeling of blaaaah, so this post is a few days behind my self-imposed weekly blogpost deadline. I do have some new-ish pictures to share though, from the photo club walkabout at the coast I did two weekends ago.
New gear at the train station
There is a certain excitement for a photography nerd when there’s new gear around - although in my case the new gear I’ve acquired in the last few year has been OLD gear - in the shape of analog cameras. Last year I got myself a Kiev 60 medium format camera and that was a fun piece of (to me) new old tech to have a go at, shooting those lovely large 6 x 6 cm negatives. I’ve enjoyed exploring 135 format film photography too with various cameras. However, I’ve been feeling that my 2011 Canon 600D DSLR has been used less and less, because the low-light capabilities felt lacking. Also, the size of it was beginning to be a problem for my more and more achy hands (which is a bit ironic, given that when I got that Canon camera I felt I needed to add a battery grip to let my hands grab it properly).
Festival days, part II
Last blog post I showed some of my digital images from the recently finished Malmö Festival, the annual event held in Malmö, Sweden (for the last 35 years). I took analog shots too during my visits to the event, but I had yet to develop them at the time. I’ve done that now and scanned them as well, so this week’s entry in this blog is all about the analog shots I took, both with my 135 camera (a Canon 650) as well as my 120 camera (a Kiev 60).