RMONTALBAN: Stranger Portraits: Rolleiflex

I am obsessed with taking pictures (it engages my mind like reading a book does for others). I take so many photographs it's frightening. I take them digitally (and i-phone) although recently I have been using 120 and 35mm film far more often (in fact I have 4 spools waiting to be collected and which I will pick up today and one colour one to drop off). Because of this I have even now bought a self developing tank for black and white film and want to buy a film scanner too as we have been told that we are going to be gifted an enlarger which is sitting in someone's house unused! That is a funny story in itself, as the people who are giving it to Anders and I have this lovely antique shop called Anteaques and they were laughing as they saw me run out of their shop to photograph the fishmonger and neighbouring butcher who were hanging out of their shops! These are the photos I am picking up today. I was so excited about this scene that I nearly self combusted when I saw it looking out of the window of the shop next door which resulted in me running out of it and back into the tearoom (where Anders and Dexter were enjoying a lovely cup of tea and Matcha cake) to grab my cameras whilst explaining what I was doing and then running out of there like some Tasmanian devil or Roadrunner cartoon character! After taking the pictures (having run across a main road like a crazy woman) wondered (as they were taken on my Rolleiflex) "did I actually get the settings right and did I keep it still enough" because I literally almost shaking with excitement!!! This is why the enlarger came up in conversation and that is so nice of them to give it to us.

To me the world is full of things which excite me and old film cameras (particularly my beautiful Rolleiflex is anything but discrete) just add to that especially when it comes to capturing people.