New Year's Eve in Clare

Scan from a Rolleiflex film camera.

This photo of an old timer in a country town is similar to one that I took a few days ago. I like the metaphor of the young man sitting in the shadows ahead with sunlit old age advancing towards him.

More testing today of the old Rolleiflex that I bought recently. It is a very comfortable camera to use and I remembered that many famous street photographers used Rolleiflexes, like Doisneau, Arbus and Vivian Maier. Using an old camera like this forces you to slow down - lack of familiarity with it is part of the reason, and also the image is reversed in the viewfinder and it takes a while to get used to turning in the right direction. Everything is manual, no light meters and there are only 12 shots for each film. So each shot is considered and this is a challenge in a street photography setting. Once the films were developed I was a little disappointed with the sharpness of the lens. Perhaps this is another camera for the shelf, it is a beautiful object.

Happy New Year everyone.