Firstly, I need to address how long it has been since I last wrote here. It feels like coming back to your house after spending a vacation abroad. Everything needs to be updated. But I am going to try my best to be consistent with my posts from here on out. A LOT has happened since the last time you saw me here, and I hope to fill you in on everything and more.
Earlier this year in May, I visited my family and friends back home in India. It wasn't necessarily a photography trip, but I decided to carry all my cameras. Still relatively new to this multi-medium photography workflow, I brought along with me 3 cameras: The Canon 70D, Sony ZV-1, and Nikon F3.
It dawned upon me quite early in this trip that it would be impossible for me to efficiently switch cameras often. In a way, having three cameras added the additional obstruction of having to think about which camera to use when: a question I never really had to deal with prior to this. Because of this, my Canon 70D got relegated to my bag for almost the entirety of the trip. I decided to flirt with the novel mediums instead (novel for me, at least) It was just the other two from that point on: a small point-and-shoot and an old film camera.
We visited my birthplace: Siliguri. Siliguri, a 6-hour train ride from Howrah station in Kolkata, is a town near the Himalayas. We were just here for a day, and we decided to visit some temples and meet some family friends. Sadly, We couldn't see much of Kanchenjunga, which is visible in clearer months. However, we visited the Teesta river, and I took the photo below from the Coronation bridge on the ZV-1. This bridge was made in 1941 and costed Rs. 600,000 then!
On the film side of things, I quickly finished the few remaining photos I had on my Ektachrome in the F3, and popped in a 'fresh' roll of ColorPlus I managed to buy from one of the few stores in Kolkata selling film. The price was a steal: 300 Rs per roll of film. After I bought it, I came out of the store, happy, with two rolls of Colorplus to shoot with. Only a day later did I realize that the expiration date was scratched out from the back of the box, an obvious red flag I should have noticed at the store. Ah well, I realized, might as well shoot with it now considering that the store had a no-returns policy.
A lot of the pictures that came out from the roll are what I'd call 'experimental': really washed out colors, really what many would call the 'film look' I think it's quite appalling, to be honest, but I'll let you be the judge.
Somehow, these pictures have the ability to look aged even though they were taken this year itself.
But from the dumpster fire emerged a few phoenixes, and I was able to salvage a few of the photos. These photos of nicely lit shrubs definitely fit the roster, in this case.
I also took some rolls of bulk-rolled Ilford HP5+ and Fomapan 400, which got rather botched up during development and scanning (I developed and scanned these myself)
These were some really dusty scans.
Of course, I didn't only take pictures on my film camera. Some times, I took my ZV-1 out on a walk when I wanted something more discreet.
The upcoming series of photos, I like to call 'Thinking in threes'. Our professional communications professor likes to discuss how we should use threes in our rhetoric. In fact, we see threes everywhere, 'Government of the people, by the people, of the people', 'one’s an incident, two’s a coincidence, and three’s a pattern'. Things in threes are apparently more memorable. When I was taking the following pictures, that rule is not something I had set out to test. However, I think it holds up pretty well in this case. In fact, there are three pictures in this series itself! Layered!
In older India, water was typically brought home by a person we called 'bhaari wala' These people would carry water in buckets hanging from two sides of a long stick, resting the stick on their shoulder, like a see-saw. It's surprising seeing one in today's day and age, walking down Rashbihari Avenue.
Toward the end of one day, I really started to test the limits of this expired 200-speed film. I took this photo of a bus conductor curiously looking at me. Bus conductors are an important part of Kolkata's city bus systems. They ticket the passengers and notify the driver where and when to stop, depending on the passenger traffic. They also advertise where the bus is going. Quite often, a bus conductor can be seen shouting stop names at the top of his voice.
Another day, I was walking in Kalighat when I noticed a tailor sitting with his sewing machine on the pavement, working under just an umbrella. Somehow we both started talking and he told me how his daughter knows so much about today's technology and how he asked her to put his business on Google for people to find. I decided to photograph him after this talk. Maybe if you ever decide to go to Kolkata and need some quick tailoring, perhaps you'll find a tailor sitting on the side of the road with his sewing supplies.
The same day, I saw this scene, which I felt just deserved to be photographed.
Overall, I think the photos I took in Kolkata during this trip were only passable. I wouldn't call these photos particularly portfolio-worthy. However, I had a good time taking some of these photos and talking to the people in front of the camera.
After this, I flew to Mumbai, with shorter trips to Surat and Pune. Perhaps I'll talk about these trips and the photos I took in them on an upcoming post.
All the film photos in this post were developed and scanned at Khalifa Art Center in Qatar, except for the black and white photos on the Ilford HP5+.
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