Having recently visited the USA for a family holiday, and having decided to shoot pictures on film with my Yashica rangefinder, I have been enjoying editing the resulting images. They are mostly street pictures influenced by a combination of my favourite American photographers - William Eggleston, Garry Winogrand, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Henry Wessel etc. They don't all include people. I took them over a period of 3 weeks in various locations from New Hampshire to New York City. Some are obviously urban, some very rural. Some are taken close to the subject, others from a distance. It would be hard to define an overall mood to the pictures - I was excited when I took them, mostly because I was thrilled to be using film again with all the attendant risks and uncertainty - but some of the images could be interpreted as ironic or quizzical interpretations of American culture. I have sequences of hats, umbrellas, empty and abandoned chairs, signs and other sets of objects. Simply throwing all the photographs together in a random order has produced some intriguing results. However, I have also enjoyed using more coherent strategies like those listed above.

Here, for example is a sequence of images connected by colour - in this case, red. When I used to shoot exclusively with Kodachrome 64 transparency film (now sadly unavailable) it was always the reds that seemed most vivid in the resulting slides. Perhaps I'm still subconsciously drawn to red when I make photographs, although it could also be argued that so are advertisers and shop window display artists and sign designers and others who create our visual landscape, precisely because red is so seductive, leaping out at you and grabbing your attention. Perhaps one of the most famous red photographs ever made is William Eggleston's fly's eye view of his friend's ceiling. As Eggleston himself observed:

Anyway, here are my red photographs, which I've decided to title 'Songs everybody knows':

This isn't the definitive set of images, just one of many potential edits. I love photography precisely because it offers this ongoing experience of meaning making long after the images themselves have been created. I hope it's one of the things I try to communicate to my students. Taking the photograph is just the start of a creative journey. It's definitely a feature of my Photopedagogy.

-- Jon Nicholls

Our series of favourite camera guest posts continues with this homage to the Yashica 635 TLR.

This is a Yashica 635 camera, the lens is a Yashikor 80mm f/3.5 in Copal-MXXV shutter with speeds 1-1/500. It really helps me to create an image. The viewfinder is at the top, which allows you to look at the image in a unique way as looking down allows you to look head on. The square format encourages me to frame the images and knowing that the lens will capture what I see is a great guide. It is easy to adjust the aperture and speeds according to the available light. I can also be creative with the aperture with some fantastic results. I can allow less light than I would with 35mm as the frame is larger at 6 x 6. It is possible to take images without advancing the frame. Taking double exposures is easy. Sometimes I make double exposures accidentally - I believe in happy accidents so I am always content with the results. Sometimes there are other irregularities which look great, such as when the film has not wound on properly resulting in the double exposure being at the end of the image or with the light flare when too much light has entered the camera for some unknown reason. These ‘mistakes’ can only happen with film and make it much more interesting to look at. The camera can also be adapted to use 35mm film with a special kit so it is versatile, although I continue to use 120mm film. This summer I will spend a week using 35mm and cant wait to see the results.

This camera has allowed me to ‘construct’ images as it takes time to make photographs. It has forced me to first look around at the image without the camera and to think carefully about what it is I want to capture. I can then think about how I want the light to appear as it is possible to have more control over your images using film and especially with this camera. It has also helped me to gauge the distance I need to be from the subject either to capture the whole scene or just and interesting section. 

This is the only camera which I would take with me to a desert island.