The process of packing up ones life, boxing it and moving it is difficult. We are doing that right now, and soon we will have the absolute bare necessities. The clutter will be gone and for a short while we will live with only the things we truly need.
It feels good to be stripped down to the basics. Sometimes it is good to go back to the beginning. I sometimes like to go before my beginning and shoot a couple of rolls of 120 film in my old Yashica D which I picked up at a charity store for R150.00. And the D does not stand for digital: it is the model after the Yashica C. The shutter is cocked with one lever, and the film moved on with a seperate dial. There is no light meter. And the horizontals have not travelled through a pentaprism therefore to move left in the frame one must turn the camera to the right. No zoom lenses, just a fixed 80mm. What could be more limiting?
Yet when I use this camera I remember to think. I have a limited number of frames so I compose carefully. There is no rattling off of 3 or 4 shots on motordrive. I enjoy the fact that because it is such an old camera people are less intimidated than when I shove a big modern lens in their faces.
Most of all I like remembering that a camera is a camera. The photograph is more than that. The image is as much a part of oneself as we allow. And I am ready to give...
Oh, and this image was not shot on the old Yashica but I wanted to show it anyway.
