Early Field Assignments: Lessons in 35mm Film, Press Work, and the Pentax Spotmatic F
Sometime around 1997, I inherited my mother’s Pentax Spotmatic F, a hefty mechanical instrument that initially sat on a shelf collecting dust, quietly waiting for my curiosity to catch up. It was far too bulky to haul along on family vacations, relegated instead to the occasional high-stakes family event. When I eventually embraced the craft during my secondary school years, my workflow was delightfully analog: load up a roll of Fuji Reala or Superia 400, attempt to meter, and hand the canister over to the local lab and holding my breath until the physical prints came back. Naturally, half the roll ended up under- or overexposed and promptly tossed in the bin, a direct consequence of not yet grasping how ISO, aperture, and shutter speed interact within the exposure triangle.
Photojournalism Practice: From Borrowed SLRs to Icy Roads
This particular frame, however, belongs to a slightly different chapter of my early photographic journey.
During a work practice placement at the local newspaper, I was entrusted with a piece of actual press equipment, most likely a consumer-grade Canon EOS 500, and given free rein to load a fresh spool of 35mm Fuji film. Soon enough, I found myself riding shotgun with journalist Per Snekvik as he navigated the slick, icy local roads in pursuit of the day’s coverage.
There is a distinct, nostalgic alchemy in early assignment work: the quiet tension between observational journalism and learning how to negotiate light, shutter speeds, and human moments on the fly. This shot remains a tangible artifact from those formative trips into the field, a testament to where an inherited interest, a borrowed SLR, and an open road can lead.