actually, these photos were taken on the last day of 2011 and the first day of 2012, since I couldn't finish the 35mm roll on new year's eve. this post should have a different title - it should be called something like "the last/first weekend of 2011/2012", or maybe "one weekend, two years", or "next time the weather's rainy, remember to load your camera with colour film instead of black & white" but the song by cousteau kept spinning in my head and I went for it. so there I was, new year's eve, just another saturday for some people (just me, I guess), clouds, rain, cold - a perfect day to visit the seaside. I loaded the minolta with some really old kodak panatomic-x film, decided to also take out the kiev 88 with the flektogon 50mm/f4 (I don't get a lot of time with wide-angle lenses), threw some medium format films in the bag and jumped in the car.
rafina is a nice place for winter seaside walks, the clouds were lining the sky and the colours were perfect for photographs... at that point, I realized that I hadn't brought any colour films with me apart from a slide film meant to be used with tungsten lighting... I wasted a minute in cursing and pitying myself and then decided to try my best... in the end you could say that my best wasn't good enough - lesson to self: buy a big stash of kodak portra and always carry some of them. you just can't beat colour film for anything remotely resembling a landscape.
anyway, photos. an attempt on a simple I-can-focus-really-close view of the beach...
...then this crazy guy came crashing through the sand...
...it's always nice to find interesting bits and pieces that people throw away, although it'd be nicer if you never found any kind of litter on a beach (and that proves that I can be politically correct if I want to)...
...then a typical I-have-shot-this-too-but-it-looks-better-in-colour frame taken during my superhuman attempt to finish the roll, which didn't happen anyway, since I was still in the middle of it...
...and this is the only shot from the kiev 88 roll that has some interest, although most of its interest lies in imagining how different it would be if it was a colour shot...
...that was the end of new year's eve photo walk, a searing, majestic session of uninspired photos that had the bad luck of being a black & white peg in a colour hole. thirty frames were shot on new year's eve, most of them died because of lack of any kind of photographic interest.
but you always have to try some things twice, so on new year's day I returned to the same beach to finish the 35mm roll. this time it was a little better, and I tried to get some movement in my frames...
...and you gotta love people walking their dogs on the beach - when combined with a super-slow 25 ASA film, you get the chance to imitate michael ackerman, or that other what's-his-name-guy who first shot a moving dog...
so that's it, a weekend of enjoyable walking by the sea and not so enjoyable photographs. hell, at least I cay say that 2011 left, 2012 came and I was still trying to finish one roll of film - one more story to tell my children (or somebody else's children, anyway). I have to point out that I learn from my mistakes, though - my next trips to the seaside were shot exclusively in colour.