How I Fell In Love ⚡️Just thanks to a flash of light 📸

in #photography4 years ago (edited)

Dear Steemians

This summer I have fallen in love.
We will never be apart.
There is no one like her.

street (39).png

As you know I am a filmmaker (and by the way this is my brand new website for more info! www.alessandroleonardi.com). This summer I was researching for my next documentary, which will take place in Berlin, and will disclose the impact of the corona crisis on local shops.

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Some neighborhood will not look the same next year, because most of the shops will not open again, mostly small shops, which sell stuff whose demand is plummeting anyways.

street (8).png

I want to capture this moment of transition, the aesthetics of bankruptcy, the end of shopping as we know it here in Neukölln, my neighbourhood.

street (17).png

And that is when I met her. It was love at first sight.
🎞
When I am researching, I normally bring my photo camera, the Canon 5D mk III, because I want to see how a location looks like through the lens, or if a person is looking good on camera. The world is different when it is captured on a photograph. And I don’t trust what I see with my naked eyes, I want to be sure it is photogenic. Only when the light hits the sensor of the camera, then I know.

street (14).jpg

Now, this time I tried something different. I still did not know how to approach my subject. Will it be a reportage about the owners of the last old shops in town? Will there be interviews with them, standing in front of their shut down business? Will it be narrated from the point of view of the products which don’t sell anymore, old CDs, vinyls, or wedding dresses even? I am not sure yet, I just think it is something timely, and I want to document this before it is too late.

This time though, as I was going around asking people to tell me the story of their small shops, and what will be their destiny, I run into the love of my life. You wonder who that is?

Here you go:

IMG_20201226_171355.jpg

This is a Pentax Honeywell Spotmatic. A 35mm reflex camera manufactured by the Asahi Optical Co. Ltd.
This is the camera I used to take these pictures. This is the camera I fell in love with.

Actually, the model or the brand does not matter to me, but this happened to be my first encounter with an analog camera. And I will never forget it.

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It came top me in a moment of my life where I felt that the world is saturated by
images, virtual, inconsistent, untouchable, ephemeral, in a word digital images. Digital photography. Now, digital photography (and overall smartphone photography) is fast and easy because it's aided by algorithms. Although skill still matters, the number of variables involved in taking a photo has been engineered to a minimum.
⚡️
That can make digital photography feel cold and artificial, and the digital photographer more like a tool than an artist. Those filters we add, then, personalize pictures that are generically exact already. The algorithms that tweak colors or fake a lens flare let you be imperfect, but only in a perfectly calculated way. Your phone still pwns you.

Running away from algorithms, from the limitations of standardized color picture and codecs, and presets... it affords you the freedom to make your own mistakes. Suffering the consequences of human error is paradoxically liberating.
📷
I will get back to you with more photos. This is just the beginning.

Yours,
⚡️Alessandro & Elena
⚡️

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