Welcome to the Mono Lake Surf Club, my oddly named photography blog. I wanted a place to put my photos to start building a ‘portfolio’ of sorts, so when someone asked to see some of my work, I could give them an actual site that wasn’t some crummy Instagram page.
I grew up with a point and shoot camera being used on almost every vacation, until digital cameras became the standard carry. In 2012 or so I acquired my grandfather’s Canon AE-1 Program kit. I played with it for a few years, wasting film on pictures around the house or town before it eventually got shelved. Film photography had become so obsolete and weird in an age of DSLR’s and pocket-able digicams.
Ten or so years pass. Graduate high school, go to college, get married, move to Sacramento for work, life goes on.
Then I think about that camera.
Analog photography sounds like fun again. Looking online it seems to have taken off again in the years between playing with that SLR in high school and now. And it has intention. More so than a digital camera or the phone in my pocket could ever have. Every shot counts, and it costs money, so try and make it worth it.
Oh and all the science and math! Figuring out shutter and aperture settings with a set ISO and the intricate mechanisms moving inside the camera body to capture light in a fraction of a second? As an engineer this mechanical aspect speaks to me.
I ask my parents to look for that AE-1 again in the closet and a couple weeks later it shows up, the body and its lenses still in perfect shape. At long last it returns, and the sickness begins. I start buying film, reading everything I can about analog photography. Learning that camera back to front like my life depends on it. I load up my first roll of film in years and set out to snap some photos.
And I’ve been hooked ever since, like that big brine shrimp tugging on your line.
Next meetup: South shore, high tide
Mono Lake Surf Club 