1 Down

What was my take going to be on 2015?

I finished roll 1 yesterday, and dropped it off at the drugstore minutes later. Mostly stray shots, odds and ends, documenting the place I currently live in; Cologne, Germany. Taken with probably my least creative camera, a Minolta Riva Mini. (Which, sidebar, was one of those mythic thrift store finds. Cost € 4 including battery, which pretty much means I bought a battery that happened to come in a functional camera).

Stock Pile

Before joining 52rolls for 2015, I considered why I was doing it, and what I would get out of it. Was it going to be a challenge just to get it done? I counted my rolls from 2014, my first full year of pursuing film photography. Or any kind of photography, really. I had shot at least 70. So just the bulk was not going to be the problem.

Was I going to make this year about some overarching project, some theme or technology? Street photography, portraiture, landscape, urban landscape, color (negative, slide?), black and white, polaroid? 35mm? 120? SLRs, TLRs, point-and-shoots, rangefinders? The e-mail with the request to be part of this sat in my inbox. Finished, not sent.

Should I make it about process and processing, about better understanding what I’m doing when I develop film, or when I scan it? About learning flash photo techniques? Should I select one topic or one camera, or one film stock for every week or every month. Just what was I going to contribute to this big thing, this simple yet powerful idea of 52 rolls of film in 2015?

Was I overthinking it? Couldn’t it just be about me finding what I love about this pursuit, and get better at it? Shouldn’t that be what 2015 was about? That I would get closer to the kind of photographer that was somehow in me, whoever that might turn out to be?

So I clicked send.

I’m Torsten. I have 1 roll down. 51 to go.