Photography during a pandemic!

As the world struggles to cope with the "new normal" that is life during the Covid-19 pandemic that has the world in a headlock, my photography has changed. I am still shooting film, but since most labs were closed for months and are only now starting to reopen, I haven't been able to get anything developed. I could have mailed my film to one of the few labs still operating, but our postal system has been "swamped" with online purchases that I don't trust sending my film through the mail. So I also been shooting some digital, something I haven't done a lot of lately.

I would have been out to shoot some street photography, but that has mostly been on film. I shot the local Black Lives Matter rally/protest in Barrie, but I shot it on film using my Minolta X-700 (on Kodak Gold 200) and on my Yashica Minister D (on Ilford's HP+) and haven't gotten those rolls developed yet. I have a lot of things that I shot of film and those rolls need to be developed. I also shot a roll on a Bencini Korrel S medium format camera that I have had for a while but haven't shot with yet. I am hoping to get it developed soon.

One thing we have done lately has been go out for long drives in the countryside looking for things to photograph. We have looked for abandoned places and such to capture. I have also continued my project photographing the barn quilts that have become so popular with farmers of late.

                                                    Photographing Covid 19 isolations

                                            Photographing abandoned farms and houses

Photographing barn quilts

As it looks like the effects of Covid-19 are not going to ending anytime soon, the things we photograph and how we photograph will remain altered for the foreseeable future. I am hoping to be able to shoot some portraits soon. I have a roll of Kodak Portra 160 that I am die to shoot some portraits with. 

On a more interesting side (at least for me) is that I managed to buy a box of film camera gear at a really good price. In it was a Minolta X-700 (my second one), a Minolta SRT100 and five or six Minolta lenses. I am looking forward to putting them through their paces. I have already shot a roll of  Kodak Gold 200 film through my Minolta X-700 and the Minolta Rokkor-X 135mm f3.5 lens. But again that roll is in a bag with all the other rolls that are awaiting to be developed. I am really enjoying my Minolta gear. 

                                                         My Minolta gear collection