Vacations on film
10 years of documenting travel on 35mm
There isn’t much of anything original I can say as set up for this one. Many of us screen-addled photographers have rediscovered the delights of shooting on film. (Though, some have already abandoned it again given how expensive it's gotten). For me, that dates back to 2016 when I first decided to pack my rangefinder, rather than a digital camera, and about a dozen rolls for a trip to Europe.
I wanted to eliminate the possibility of me sitting in an Airbnb rifling through Capture One rather than being out in a city I’d flown so far to visit. Shooting on film wound up being both a pleasant challenge and a way to stay present wherever I was. Other than keeping your rolls from getting cooked in airport X-rays, there’s no fiddling with autofocus settings, color profiles, or batteries. It’s just eyes up, searching for moments worthy of a precious frame on whatever stock you loaded, click, and move on.
Over the past decade, I shot rolls of Portra (now Ektachrome) 160 and 400, as well as some Ilford HP5. Here are some of my favorite frames.
