My dad, in his office/studio with his paintings in the background.
I took this picture some time in mid-June, on a Pentax Asahi camera. My dad had bought that camera some 50+ years ago, in the late 1960s.
I came across his camera many years ago, at a time when I was collecting old cameras for decorative purposes. I would have a little "chronology of cameras" consisting of 5-6 different cameras: from old vintage models, to polaroid, to point-and-shoot, all the way to an iPhone 5c (my first iPhone). From San Francisco to Shanghai, I'd usually line them up on a shelf, and marvel at the technological evolution – It made me very happy to look at them.
In parallel, as the pandemic started last year, I told myself I would want to learn new skills. And film photography was on top of that list. As I started looking around for a film camera to buy, it dawned on me that I had already been carrying one around with me for many years – my dad's old Pentax Asahi.
Unsure if it would work, I went and bought a film. A black-and-white one, by mistake. I didn't even understand the settings, but I thought I should just fill the roll and see if the camera was even still capable of producing pictures. Now, some 5 weeks later, I know it does.
Yesterday I downloaded the results and this shot of my dad was the one that I liked the most. It's a little blurry, and looks like part of the film on the left and right were somehow double-exposed. But it's an honest capture of him in his element – talking to relatives on the phone, suspenders holding up his pants as he is losing weight, and a subset of his paintings in the background.
If I wasn’t already motivated to further develop this skill, it’s results like this one that add fuel to a small but mighty flame.