words . youngdoo

John sent me a Yashica Electro35, an old rangefinder, for Christmas last year. It took me a little while to get used to the idea of rangefinder but I’ve been having a lot of fun carrying it around and snapping away! I know film photography can get expensive however there’s something very attractive about it and I’m learning to appreciate it better now. I like to share some of the better shots I got with the handsome old rangefinder. The last photo is the Yashica Electro35 itself.

On our way to the west, we spent a few days in Memphis where John’s brother James was living at that time. We went to Otherlands – John & James’ favorite place for breakfast in the mornings, walked around downtown looking for interesting signs and places that are Memphis-esque, spent the afternoons taking pictures by the river, and hung out at local pubs drinking beer and catching up with each other at nights.

The best memory of Memphis is watching and photographing the beautiful sunset by the river although I didn’t get any photographs from it that are extra-ordinary. Like everything else in life, it reminded once again journey matters more than the destination.

I spent almost about a month on the road in USA in the autumn last year. As I always do, I took so many random photos mostly to document my journey and some to add to my future portfolio assets.

Although I’ve been going through the photos from the trip for the past a couple months and uploaded quite a lot to my Flickr account, I still have a lot more to go through. I plan on finishing them by the end of the month and share the better ones with you whoever stumbled upon my blog that has rather been neglected for quite some time now.

I love my photos. Not because I think I’m a better photographer but because, like a lot of photographers I know of, I enjoy documenting my life through photos and looking at them helps me remember things better. When I look at the photos I took in the past, it’s very easy for me to remember the details of the moments such as how I felt when I was pressing the shutter, whether I was in a good mood or a bad one, what the air smelled like, how warm the sunlight was, etc. I was going through the photos from the trip and I realized once again how wonderful the trip was although it was rather challenging at times for me being more of a city girl than a camper.

I’m going to slowly upload the better photos from the trip starting from today and I guess it makes the most sense if I do it in the chronological order. So, here we are. I’m starting with some photos of Blue Ridge Parkway where we passed through on our way to Memphis. The colours of the mountains were so beautiful but the grey day with the rain weren’t too kind for the photos.

It’s been a long time since I made the last entry on this blog. I’ve been busy working and traveling but I’m still alive. 45 days of the trip to USA was wonderful and I came back with a whole bunch of photographs to share. I developed most of the film photos but haven’t found enough time to go through all the digital ones just yet. I will upload them on my flickr whenever I find time between work.

Today, I’ve decided to share one of my favorite photographs from the trip. The more I take photos, I find myself appreciating the process of taking photos more than the results. The reason I like this photo so much is that it reminds me of the beautiful day driving up the California Highway 1 along the Pacific coastline, running into this old lady who was painting the ocean sitting by the ocean, having such a pleasant conversation with her, and how wonderful it felt to frame, focus, and release the shutter to capture the beautiful moment I was enjoying. Taking this shot with a Hasselblad was a bonus as it’s such a great camera with an excellent experience of photo taking process.

Anyway, here’s the photograph for you to view and I hope you would enjoy.

I’ve been shooting quite a few wedding photos starting from my previous co-worker Miguel’s wedding in Braga, Portugal last year. While I was going through some of the wedding photo archives, I decided to post a few shots from my first wedding photo shoot.

I was lucky to be able to travel all the way to Braga for my first wedding photo assignment as well as to have some time to travel around in Portugal and Spain while I was on that side of the world. The church Miguel got married is the oldest Portuguese sanctuary called Bom Jesus do Monte and it was one of the most beautiful churches I’ve even seen.

Anyway, here are a few photos from that wedding.