areaeleven

A friend invited me over for more drinks and food on Box­ing Day so I decided to take my cam­era and walk from my place to his. The trip takes me across down­town which on that day was pretty much deserted. So there I was, mind­ing my own busi­ness, walk­ing up the street with my cam­era around my neck when this guy stopped me.

I don’t nor­mally shoot peo­ple, so I’m never look­ing to ask or approach any­one for a snap. This guy offered, but not before he told me his story. Seems he was out on Box­ing Day look­ing for a bar or pub that was open. But not for drink­ing, for VLT’s. He made sure to tell me he wasn’t addicted or any­thing, it’s just that he’s really, really lucky. A horse­shoe where the sun don’t shine appar­ently. I told him I hadn’t seen an open estab­lish­ment dur­ing my trav­els so I wasn’t of much help. Then he offered his Beaker — strange sci­en­tist side­kick from the Mup­pets — impres­sion as a part­ing gift. Who am I to decline that?

Any­way, I com­posed, focussed and shot, but he didn’t believe me because he didn’t hear the click or sound or what­ever a cam­era is sup­posed to do. So I had to tell him the story of my ultra-quiet, film-based, man­ual every­thing rangefinder cam­era. A story about my addic­tion — it’s not I swear — for his. After that he told me not to trust those cash for gold places and left. Never a dull moment.

Cam­era used was a Mamiya 6 with a Mamiya 75mm lens. Film used was Kodak 400TX exposed at 320 devel­oped in a small tank using Rod­i­nal 1+50 for 16 and a half min­utes at 20 degrees Cel­sius. Agi­ta­tion was an ini­tial five inver­sions, then two inver­sions every minute.

This pho­to­graph was taken at 44.646925,-63.575498 in Decem­ber, 2009 and is Copy­right 2009 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.

Tags: blackandwhite · halifax · mamiya6 · mediumformat · novascotia · people · street
Posted in: Photographs

• greg January 3, 2010

  now that’s a great story behind a photo

  happy new year dude!

  Reply to this comment by greg

Leave a Comment