It’s been a while since there was an update here. While it may seem as if I neglected my project, fear not! It’s still very much alive and in the works. As you may recall from my February post, March was a return to Black & White photography and the Lomography Earl Grey 100 for medium format cameras (120 film format).
March in NYC can mean t-shirt weather or blizzards with not much in between – thanks, global warming. When the weather is trash and daylight is done before you get out of work, it’s hard to motivate yourself to get out and make pictures. Don’t wait for inspiration – when the weather is bad you can take advantage and see how the world around you reacts. New Yorkers as you see in the gallery above are a resilient bunch; the post office got their slogan by watching New York move. The two snowstorms in March gave me a chance to get back on the Subway to take shots of people in motion. The NYC Subway system is one of my favorite subjects.
Unfortunately, thanks to the way the weather wildly swings in the month of March, I found myself taken out by a severe cold and throwing out my back and missed a good number of shooting days. Rather than resign to less than optimal health and skip the month, I took the opportunity to practice shooting with off-camera flash setups. Shooting with film made each shot intentional – I had to plan what I was hoping to achieve and make sure that my settings were correct before bringing the camera to my eye. It’s a costly lesson to learn when you only have a handful of shots to experiment with (see the toy car image above – only two usable shots in the roll) and are struggling to keep yourself upright.
All in all, I’m pleased with this month’s take – it’s not about having beautiful images to share (that helps), but about not making excuses for not shooting.
Alberto Lima 