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Notes on a second roll of Portra

2 min read

A bicycle leaning against a pale pink wall in warm late-afternoon light.
Old town, late afternoon

The second roll came back warmer than the first. I metered for the shadows this time and overexposed by about a stop, which seems to be what this film likes. The highlights do not clip so much as glow, and skin — not that there is much of it on this roll — goes the colour of good bread.

Lessons, mostly for future me

  • Keep the lens hood on in the afternoon. The flare is pretty once and tiresome by frame twenty.
  • Write the frame numbers down. “The one with the nice wall” is not a filing system.
  • Stop photographing every bicycle. There were six bicycles on this roll. Six.

The wall

There is a pink wall at the bottom of the hill that catches the sun for maybe forty minutes a day. I have walked past it for two years without noticing that. This time I waited, and the light came down the street like someone slowly opening a door.

The bicycle was not mine. I did not move it. Whoever owns it has excellent taste in parking spots.

Film makes you wait in a way that nothing else does anymore. You wait for the light, you wait for the roll to finish, you wait for the lab. By the time the scans arrive you have forgotten half of what you shot, and opening them feels a little like getting a letter from yourself.