Summer ’22

After my foray through Europe in July my plan was to spend some time getting back into street photography in NYC, particularly with my analog Minolta SR-T 102 and my first roll of color film. I had some friends and coworkers in town and was excited see the results of the vibrant city streets on Fujicolor Superia 400. I even dragged my pal Steve to the Color Factory to get some good instagram-worthy shots.

Everything was going swimmingly, but when I finished the roll I forgot to push the film-advance release button before winding it up and somehow managed to rip the film from the canister itself. And so when I opened the camera, the film fell out and unspooled, instantly being exposed to the light.

Suffice it to say I was not impressed.

It’s such a depressing thing when you realize those moments you captured are gone in an instant and there’s nothing you can do to get them back. It was a hard lesson to learn, but a valuable one as I can promise you I’ll never make that mistake again.

So, somewhat soured on film photography for a bit, I picked up my trusty Leica M240 for a few weeks of digital shooting. With the pandemic and then the recent months of playing around with analog photography it had been ages since I shot with my Leica. After just a few minutes I immediately remembered why I fell in love with that camera in the first place, and it was pretty liberating to shoot without the limitations of film.

As I thoughtlessly deleted out-of-focus photos left and right, it really put into perspective how divergent the two mediums are. I had been genuinely depressed that I accidentally lost about 30 film photos and now here I was erasing shots from my memory card by the dozens. Very different mindsets to be sure.

It took me a second to get back into the swing of using the Leica and one of my favorite lenses, the Cannon 50mm 1.4 LTM circa the late 1950’s. But it was second nature after a short time.

Here’s a sample of photos I took around the city throughout July and August.