Let's face it, photography should be enjoyable, at least some of the time. I'm sure an argument can be made in favor of perpetual angst, but today I'm in the mood to talk about fun. Several months ago my beloved Rolleiflex SL66 started misbehaving so badly that I had no other choice than to send it across the country for repair. It was going to take a minimum of 3 months to complete the work. Ugh. What was I going to shoot in the meantime? I decided to purchase a couple of Lazarus cameras. Two medium format cameras that shoot 6x6 cm negatives just like the Rollei. The constraint was that the total investment in each was limited to $200. I figured that at those prices, the laying on of hands might be required, so I decided on snagging two cameras to double my odds of raising at least one Lazarus.
The first camera I purchased was a Kowa Six. I was familiar with the Kowa brand from that time long ago when I bought a spotting scope to try my hand at birding on a trip to Galveston. Meh. Birding, not Kowa, not Galveston. The Kowa Six came with a 85 mm f/2.8 lens for a total price of $175. The body was in pretty decent shape, and did not require extraordinary measures to bring back to life, but the lens was a total disaster. But, Youtube. So, I took it apart and cleaned off all the schmutz and reassembled it. Wow, pretty nice little set up! The image below doesn't pretend to show off the high quality optics, but instead takes a deeper dive on the concept of fun.
These days, it sometimes seems as if everything has a name associated with it, and I learned that the technique demonstrated in this photograph is called intentional camera movement and has an official acronym (you guessed it, ICM). Ha ha! I'm pretty satisfied with my first ICM shot.
