Amateur, amateur, amateur...

Polaroid Super Swinger in 1978 when I was 6

My father started lending me his Rollei XF35, Minolta SRT303b (then XG9 due to the sudden collapse in prices) when I was 12, and I went into self processed B&W, mostly for cost reasons at the time (1 roll/month maximum, I had to save for 1 year to buy a flash, waited several years to get a used zoom and wide angle...).

The SRT303b developed a winding problem (now solved with lube thanks to the interwebs ! the slow speeds and 1000 are however not reliable), the XG9 went dead during an Interrail trip in 1992, and it took 6 months to get it repaired (back and forth to Japan probably). In the meanwhile I bought a Konica Big Mini because I could not find batteries for the XF35 (no internet shops yet), but the full automation and so-so results slowly killed my interest in photography until I went for digital.

I made a lot of pictures around the world but could never get the quality and feeling of the Minolta. During summer 2009 a friend mentioned the very good bargains to be made on ebay on old analogic equipment, and since then, after having performed (amateurish) comparison tests I went back to film, mostly slides for the moment because the quality I get from commercial B&W or color negative processing is fluctuating, at best. I went back to color negative for speed of processing reasons, and the bad colors are interesting in winter, and now have salvaged some old equipment to try home B&W again. I fight against dust, hairs, specks, spots, and lose but get the gray I want !

I am 100% amateurish and love to photograph friends, family, pets, horses, cars, planes and foreign countries, without bokehs, strange point of views, or whatever, night landscapes also, but seeing what I see on flickr, I try to be a little more artistic in my work, capturing colors, moods, water or light effects. I mostly fail.