More to come from our Christmas adventures soon…

I am currently spending quality time with my bearded lover of a husband of mine and my four ridiculously adorable kids with our extended families over yonder in Phoenix, Arizona. I am taking a break from all blogging and editing, and such until I get back home after January 6th. After that, there will be tons to share here, I promise. For now, I leave you with this photo of a pretty girl in a pretty hat with a pretty smile.

Many wedding photographer friends/colleagues of mine tend to go in either one of two directions when they decide they want to play around with film cameras. Either they go the Contax/Mamiya route or they go for the grittier Leica/street camera route. When I’m ready to take the $plunge$, I know I’ll be a Leica girl. But until then, I want to play around with a film camera that is a little more experimental and unpredictable. And cheap. Haha. So I bought a Zenit-B, a Russian film camera, on eBay for $40, shipped from Russia herself and equipped with a Helios 44/2 lens. I bought some 400 speed film and basically, messed around. I took these photos of my Oliver, Genevie & Jasper the dog, just to see if the camera worked. And it does. They’re not the dreamy, milky smooth images you get from a Contax. Nor are they the gritty, sharp, amazeballs-contrast images you get with a Leica M6. But they are reminiscent of the photos I took in my childhood. And that is good enough for me.

The dropping off of film rolls, the anticipation of waiting for them to be developed, the picking them up days later and not know what you’ll get when you open up the envelope of prints -all of that reminded me of how much I missed shooting film. And I am in love with it all over again. I will be experimenting with film a little more here and there, mostly in my personal life. These images are just the beginning of my new relationship with Zoila. Yes, I named my Zenit-B Zoila, yo’. And I hope to get to know her better as time goes by before breaking up with her and moving on to Louie. In case you don’t know who Louie is, that will be my Leica M6′s name when that glorious day comes.