Later today I have some interviews so my mind is pacing a little. I’m not stressed, it’s only a new job 😬

Yeah … I’m totally stressed.

I’ve done all the preparation I can for now; researched the company, reminded myself what I do for a living (software development), ironed my shirt… That sort of thing.

Still, my mind paces. Spinning like an old windmill, not actually doing anything useful, just converting and expending energy.

So that’s the perfect time to write a post, right? Maybe put some of that freewheeling to use..? I don’t know, but I can’t just sit and wait for the Teams call! So I shall ignore that for the time being and talk about my photography.

I started around 30 years ago, using a Pentax K-1000 my grandmum had given me. I think it had a 35mm lens, and I took a load of photos, only stopping because film was “dying” and getting harder to find (and afford, on a student budget).

Over the intervening years I sort of lost touch with photography as a hobby. I had film and digital point ‘n’ shoots cameras and, later, smartphones, but never had what I’d consider a proper camera: one where you can control ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and focus with actual dials (rather than the presets and levers you find on a point and shoot, or the on screen interface you have on a smartphone).

Then, back in early 2020, I decided to sell my air rifle (another hobby of mine that was in the process of lapsing) and use the funds to buy an “actual” camera – and thus swap one type of shooting for another.

Hours of research on the internet and YouTube later, and I settled on a Fujifilm X-T1 body, with the cheapest X-mount lens money could buy (just to get started). The brand new X-T3 looked amazing, but was 10x the budget I had available at that stage. The 7 year old X-T1 was the only option.

So I spent my money, and my camera arrived as a birthday present to me, and then a month or so later the world went a bit bonkers as COVID-19 swept across its face. I live in the countryside, so lockdown was relatively kind to me in any case: I always had somewhere I could go that didn’t run into anyone else.

The camera made lockdown entirely bearable though. Every day, I went out for my “government mandated daily walk” – which should have been an hour long, but… There was nobody around to tell me off, or give a damn, so it often ended up being a couple of hours long, especially on weekends.

I shot landscapes, took photos of my kids -much begrudged by them – and discovered I could adapt old lenses really easily and so got into macro… And then bought a 200mm zoom and got into birding (sort of – I never had the patience to sit for hours).

That first year I must have easily taken 10,000 photos. 99.999% of which were utter rubbish, but I was having a blast!

Then I discovered that my first camera love, Pentax, had some interesting DSLRs, so I traded my trusty Fujifilm and switched platform (I had some vintage Pentax glass already, which works seamlessly with new Pentax bodies). A couple of years spent with a Pentax K-7, then K-3, then K-P (each one gradually newer, and more amazing than the last) and I started finding my preferred style.

It crystallised, oddly enough, with a little Pentax point and shoot – the hugely capable M-X. I have gripes with the camera (I have gripes with every camera, none of them are perfect!) but the way it rendered black and white was something quite special, to my eyes. Especially with the “blue filter” turned on.

This gives a sort of Orthochrome look – in turn inspired by the looks of old wet plate collodion photography, where the medium is less sensitive to longer wavelength light (reds and oranges).

I’d seen a great video by Sean Tucker, about a chap who was travelling around the country in a converted ambulance, with a large format camera, taking wet plate collodion photographs of every lifeboat crew in Britain. The scale of the project captured my mind, but the look of the photos he was taking caught my eye. The way the reds drop to black, and faces are brutally honestly – yet beautifully – rendered, grabbed my attention.

I’ve been unsuccessfully chasing a digital version of it ever since. I suspect digital will never totally replicate the subtle nuances of those images (not least, the fact that the plate is the final image, the size and quality of the “negative” – 10″ by 8″ – would be prohibitive in a digital sensor!)

However, I have something close now. And I traded up my Pentax K-P (an absolute starship of a camera) to the camera I lusted after back in late 2019/early 2020: the Fujifilm X-T3.

Mine is a little broken: the flash hotshoe doesn’t work. I might get around to fixing that one day, but I don’t shoot with flash/strobes, so it’s moot really. All of the rest of the camera works just fine.

And so it’s natural that I should pair this excellent camera body with the cheapest shittiest plastic lens from a Kodak Funsaver disposable camera. Why wouldn’t anyone want to obscure all that amazing rendering horsepower with all of the defects that an injection moulded meniscus lens can bring to bear?!

I do own other, decent glass (that’s actually made out of glass) but there’s something about the look of that lens, especially with the film simulation I now use, that does capture something closer to that wet plate look. It’s not for all situations, nor to everyone’s taste. I don’t even use it that much (current most used lens is a vintage Pentax 40mm) because I am still getting to grips with its focal length. But it makes me smile every time I use it.

If only because of the sheer cussedness of it.

So back to the photo at the top, this is a windmill near where I live, and it was taken through the crappiest lens I own: the Kodak Funsaver lens. And it’s one of my favourite photos of the year so far. I like the balance of black and white, the general look, and the ambiguity of when it was actually taken.

It just goes to show, the gear doesn’t matter. Technical perfection is secondary to a compelling image. That’s probably a good pep talk for my interview: I’m not the most technically knowledgeable developer in the world, but my code works; it’s well laid out and I can still understand it 6 months later. I’ve got experience on my side.

I’m okay.

Here goes … Wish me luck!