23 in 2023 with an 11 year old Camera

30 Nov

I haven’t shot nearly as much as I would have liked this year, some years are like this and I don’t feel this diminishes my worth as a photographer - for me accepting the less creative times and treating them the same as the periods of great creation is pretty important. I’ve been working on lots of exciting things that aren’t photography related - which keeps me fresh and means that when I do make time to shoot more I’ll feel fresh and ready. All the same I did try and document some beautiful things I saw around Tbilisi when out and about and I find the results to be aesthetically pleasing.

Quiet photography is something I’ve been thinking about a lot this year, I recently discovered that this isn’t something I’ve thought of alone - clearly others have been thinking about and practicing this too, indeed I recently found a great article about this - all the same I have been very aware that this is what I’m into in this phase of my photography journey. The main idea is that the contemplative act of creation is relatively silent and that the art itself is strong enough to stand on its own without a whole load of noise being made. The output should have a quality of something that people want to keep coming back to again and again.

I’ve been pretty sad about the price rises of 35mm film (in particular) and also the discontinuation of my favourite film stock - Fuji Pro 400h. At the end of 2022 I sold off some 35mm cameras and also some digital to consolidate on a very pared-down daily carry that gives the look and feel of film - that combination is a mint condition Fuji XPRO 1 from 2012 along with a Carl Zeiss Touit 32mm F1.8 which is the equivalent of a 48mm in full frame. This setup clearly has a lot of limitations - firstly it’s not very fast at all, the lens isn’t that fast in terms of light transmission but also not shabby, the autofocus is limited and sometimes the exposure is frustrating… however what I hope you’ll see in the images I share here is the beautiful colour rendition, nice grain, good sharpness and lovely fall-off from in to out of focus areas. It’s a shame Zeiss don’t make more lenses for Fuji X mount but as it is they are expensive and the Fuji lenses are great - but they don’t have that Zeiss pop that I like so much. I should admit that there’s one image here taken on the Contax Zeiss Planar 50mm F1.8 and that’s the one above - what I find interesting is that the glass and coating has such a similar rendition

XPRO 1 with Zeiss Planar 1.8/32 and leather case - a classic and understated daily carry

I’ve chosen images from Tbilisi because that’s where I’ve spent the majority of 2023 - I am always amazed and how I still find beautiful details and scenes some 10 years after I moved here, this city truly is a photographic treasure.