A random #CameraNerd from France.

"bring on the film !"

Shoot, Rewind, Repeat.

 

Je précise, je suis Français et Francophone, mais comme la plupart de mon "public" parle Anglais, beaucoup de mes posts, descriptions,...sont en Anglais. Si vous souhaitez une traduction, n'hésitez pas à me demander !

 

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FROM THE "ABOUT ME" PAGE ON MY BLOG

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Who are you ?

 

Bonjour y'all, my name is Yassine S.

I am 25 year old (and as my lady noticed, I’m starting to have gray hair!), and living in Caen, in the lovely region of Normandy, in France (I have also lived for a short time in Portsmouth, England, for my studies).

As you would probably have figured out by yourself, I’m pretty much a camera nerd who loves to have something with a shutter button in the hands.

 

Do you have any hobby outside of photography ?

 

Ma boi, fo’ sure ! I’m greatly interested into improvisation drama, aeronautics, skateboarding, poker, coffee, history, video games, IT and sciences (I guess that’s my nerd side). And playing music, studying it, and of course listen to it.

 

What do you do in life ? Are you a professional photographer (or “pro tog”) ?

 

No, I’ve never wanted to have one of my hobbies as my occupation, let alone being a pro tog. I feel like I’d loose a lot of creative freedom. Being a professional photographer (save for the “happy few” that can dictate their conditions and truly live off their art) means mostly a daily photographic grind and not doing the photos you want, but the photos the client wants. Also, I feel sympathy for the guys who earn a living by photographing weddings : I could not do such a thing for more than a few weeks without turning into a maniac. Being able to endure the endlesly unfancy demands from ugly couples and the kids’ shenanigans at the weddings, is sure proof of great mental strentgh !

Long story short : for the moment, I am a student for a master degree in international projects management, at the University of Caen, where I hope to graduate next year.

  

How long have you been pressing shutter buttons ?

 

I can’t really get a starting point for me doing photos…I can remember holding cameras really far in the past, with my first known experience was trying to take a picture of my mother with an Olympus AF-10, somewhere around 1993, and I was 3 year old. Yeah, I kinda like this date, I can now say to my girlfriend “I was taking photos before you were even born!” as she’s from ‘96.

The moment I started taking pictures on a regular basis seems to be around the start of the new century, but it was more like casual snapshoting. I had no clue of how it worked. Then around 2008, I started a photography blog (was kinda the trend, wasn’t it?) to show my stuff, and people started giving me advice to enhance my compositions, but still I did it with a digital point and shoot, and did not care for the “science” behind. And finally, during my stay in England two years ago, I started to dig into the art of photography, and I feel like I steadily improved since then, while rediscovering film photography at the same time I also started to turn into a camera collector, you know that GAS (gear acquisition syndrom)…

  

Why do you shoot film ?

 

I was planning to write a fully-fledged article on this matter, but for those who dread the “TLDR” syndrome, let me sum it up : film photography is a complete process, in which you can really “shape up” you image the way you like, and to me feels like offering a lot more possibilities of personal expression than digital. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to diss digital photography, and both have their own strenght and cater to different styles of personal expression. And for my own expression, analogue just feels more natural.

 

What type of photography are you into ?

 

Currently, I am mostly interested in street photography, portrait photography, and sports (skateboarding/aviation) photography. I also would love to try photoreporting for once !

I also can’t deny my lanscape photography roots, and for a long time I was a poor boy with no friends willing to model and lacked the confidence to take it to the streets.

 

What about your current gear ? You spoke of GAS…

okay lads, let’s dig into that kind of nerdiness, shall we ?

Currently, I have (might not be totally updated!)…

 

■'99 Canon EOS300

-Canon 18-80mm f/3.5 lens

■'96 Canon EOS500N (my main camera)

-Sigma 18-105mm f/4.0 lens

■'95 Minolta Maxxum 300SI

-Sigma 70-300mm f/4.5 lens

-Minolta 35-70mm f/3.5 lens

■'94 Pentax Espio 135M (23-135mm, f/5.6)

■'93 Pentax PC50 (35mm fixed, f/4.0)

■'89 Olympus AF-10 (35mm fixed, f/3.5)

■'81 Praktica MTL-3

-Pentacon 50mm f/2.8 lens

-Pentacon 135mm f/3.5 lens

■'79 Kodak Instamatic 77x, in its box case with accessories (42mm fixed, f/11)

-original “Magicube” single use flash.

■A very bad tripod

■A shitload of Fujifilm

■A beautifull model that sometimes acts as a girlfriend or advisor