Clem

This is a back-blip. On a last minute decision we drove to Adelaide yesterday first thing. I took my Mamiya C33 film camera (see it here) with me and wandered around the Central Markets taking photos, sparingly because a roll of film only contains 12 shots. The camera is a brick and gets heavy on the neck after a short time. But it had the surprising advantage of being interesting to people. I was stopped by half a dozen strangers who wanted to talk about the camera, even hold it (I was happy to let them take the weight for a while). From that point it was easy to ask for a photo and people were actually pleased to pose for this strange old camera.

Clem was one of those people. I saw him and his amazing beard across the road and wandered over on spec. He saw the camera and stopped me to talk about it. He was familiar with it. An extremely cheerful and outgoing guy, he asked for some money, and showed me his plastic bottle of clear spirit, the "strong stuff". I couldn't believe my luck when he agreed to a photo and he was absolutely beaming into the lens while I fumbled around with the focus. Unfortunately the intensely smiling eyes that I saw don't show in this photo.

I have been delayed in posting this by a frustrating period yesterday trying to get not one, but two scanners to work properly. In the end I gave up in frustration and went to bed. This morning I simply held the neg up against a clear blue sky and photographed it with a macro lens.

Thank you to everyone who commented yesterday. I will respond today.