Places: Lo-Fi Photography from Another Time
“Remember places?”
That’s what my friend Kim texted back after I excitedly sent her a bunch of film photos I had just gotten back from getting processed the other day. There were grainy, out of focus shots from a road trip I had taken down the Pacific Coast Highway in California. Snapshots of vintage signs in Old Vegas. Vast desert scenery from Joshua Tree National Park. Poolside pictures from Palm Springs. Double exposures from a winter sunset on Cape Cod. Sad images of a rundown cabin I made the mistake of staying at in Northern Michigan one summer. One single shot of a palm tree from a long weekend in Austin, TX…
I recently uncovered 5 rolls of film that I shot on my Diana camera from 2015-2016 but never got processed. I couldn’t remember exactly what was on the film when I dropped it off to get developed, but it felt like Christmas when I opened the email with all the scanned files.
There were places! Far away places.
Sigh.
In a year with very little and very limited travel, it felt like such a treat to be able to flip through dozens of “new” photos from old trips I had taken. And while I have my Fujifilm digital camera that I typically shoot with, a 35mm film camera, and a medium format Mamiya, I have to say, I really love shooting with the Diana.
It’s a little, plastic toy camera that is lo-fi and unpredictable—and for a Type A, mess-averse person like myself who can’t help but be neat and contained with my creative endeavors, this camera forces me to relinquish control and to forgo any attempt at perfectionism. I point, I shoot, and I leave the creative interpretation to the camera.
You never know what you’re going to get with the Diana, and the element of surprise is part of what makes shooting with it so much fun. Sometimes the photos are truly terrible. But then sometimes they’re gritty, and dreamy, and distorted in all the right ways.
I love it.
Here’s a lo-fi look back at a few places I traveled to in 2015-2016 through the lens of my Diana.
California, 2016
Cape Cod, 2015
Las Vegas, Joshua Tree National Park, and Palm Springs, 2016
Northern Michigan, 2015
