If texts bore you out, please scroll to the end for the photos. I’m not a good writer anyways.
I take pride in the B&W photos I took while studying in NYC. They were meant for a darkroom class I was taking, well, maybe only partly. I’ve always enjoyed strolling and wandering around in every part of the city, so I would’ve taken photos even not for the class. But maybe the class urged me to take more than I usually did.
I was (and still am) very introverted, so taking photos was my main entertainment on the weekends, sometimes my only activity. I remember the instructor stressing we needed to go through at least 5 rolls of film per week (or was it 2 weeks?), but I always just used 2 rolls, knowing that all 72 images in there would come out great (the confidence!).
I developed the film and printed the images in the darkroom myself. I definitely was not apt at printing, but I love the fact I brought the photos into existence with my own hands. I scanned the prints using a scanner in the library, and I don’t think I’d made any further editing. So these photos are not fancy. They were developed and printed by an amateur and scanned with your most common office scanner.
Over the years, I started (and stuck to) purchasing professional developing services at renowned labs and requested scans by a high-end Hasselblad machine (I basically used the most expensive and extensive service I could find and afford). The experience did spark joy, but it was not nearly as rewarding as what I had in that darkroom. Of course, outside the class, I shot on more expensive film, not the boring Ilford HP5 requested.
Well, look at me now. I stopped shooting film a few years ago due to a sudden and steep spike of film prices and the discontinuation of several of my favorite rolls. I first switched to digital photography, and then, gradually, I found myself taking photos less and less. I used to feel a cringe when calling myself a photographer, but now I feel more incompetence, and maybe a bit of shame.
But I decide to look back, in the hope of rekindling my passion for photography, for film, and reconnecting with the thrill brought by creating.
The photos I’m about to share are not in a series per se. I didn’t take them with a theme in mind. But I want and need to archive them somewhere (not just in my SSD), so here they are.
你就是大牛子吧！