Back in December 2011 I was in London with a Yashica-Mat 124G that I had just bought on eBay. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the Mat was actually broken & of the full 12 shots I took on that first roll only half actually came out. As far as I can tell, the rest were actually shot onto the backing paper. That roll was also the first time I ever developed a film myself, so looking back at it I was incredibly lucky to get such a nice photo of the Christmas decorations at Covent Garden, which looked even better when I rescanned it when I got my Epson V600.
I told myself that if Covent Garden had the same decorations up again, I would go down better prepared with a tripod & camera I knew worked properly. Well Christmas 2014 came around & the same decorations went up, so I hopped on the train with my RB67 Pro SD, a 5-pack of Tri-X & a nice Manfrotto tripod borrowed from work. Well, not so much hopped, as it was rather a heavy setup!
Of course ‘the best laid plans’ etc. & the shoot didn’t go quite as perfectly as I had hoped. It was quite late on a Sunday night by the time I made it out & got set up, so there were far fewer people than I had expected & the same bustling Christmassy atmosphere wasn’t really there. But conversely, because there were fewer people & the parasols were down, you could actually see from the vantage point all the way to the back of the building & the pillars across the entry. The flare from the lamps is unfortunate as well, but I’m honestly not sure how I could’ve avoided that – something to learn for the future!
I took a bunch of shots, both from the same off-centre position as 2011 & from the exact centre. None of the shots jumped out like that original 2011 shot, but there were a couple that I was relatively pleased with (click for bigger).
