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This roll is interesting… It dates back to like February, before pandemic/shelter-in-place. The first half of the roll I shot through a Pentax K1000 I found in my dad’s old camera bag. Me and my housemate made a little video on it that I never really felt “finished” with so I put it on the backburner. I wanted to make a video where I developed that film and showed the results but when Covid hit, it put a curveball in everything and the roll sat in my fridge. We also ran out of developer at the house, and then the messiness of the house made me indecisive unto how we would film that portion of the video.

Ultimately, I made a bunch of excuses for the video but eventually developed the roll and got the scans back to confirm I should keep using this camera. The K1000 works great, and the roll switches over to my M6 around the frames of the Poppies. You almost can’t tell, as the K1000 and its 28mm f/2.8 prime lens is very sharp. Its focusing mechanism and exposure meter took some getting used to and I find both more helpful but also more intrusive to the experience compared to the M6’s rangefinder shooting experience. Overall it was fun and easy to use and I now use it as a carry-around that I don’t mind it banging around or if (knock on wood) something were to happen to it.

The K1000 frames were made in Petaluma, CA and the M6 frames were made in Santa Rosa, CA.
Some of the clips from the video and frames from this roll are in this video.

Peace!

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photo: Dennis Andrade

The journey I took through my soul this past year has not been an easy one, but it has been well worth the persistence to reach this point of reflection. I made it through 2019 into the New Year, and with that has come many developments and achievements I wouldn’t have even imagined attaining back in 2018, such as shooting promos, events, and music videos for local artists and businesses, selling my photographs, developing film at home, and curating this website to display my work at the freedom of my own expression.

Every ounce of struggle I felt led me to maneuver through my issues and my emotions, and ultimately, create something out of it because in those instances, I felt like I had nothing anymore. Everything I knew about myself among this world, I had questioned all over again. This amount of doubt and questioning led me on a true deep-sea exploration into my mind fishing for some answers. It couldn’t happen any other way: I was bound to hit a new rock bottom, just as I am soon bound to reach a new high.

photo: Matthew Pak

But that’s just who I am. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t question the world and question myself the way that I do. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t get the answers from yesterday and form the questions of tomorrow, today. Everyday, I’ve new questions and new answers. Knowledge cries out to me, because I likely don’t give knowledge enough attention… But in this process, knowledge was my savior. Knowledge I already had within that I just needed to be reminded of.

The clearest messages to my soul have been: to stay grounded in my gratitude and humility to the Earth, to free myself from dependency, judgment and pressure, to handle my energy preciously, and to build trust within myself.
To be myself and thus to love myself, unconditionally and unapologetically.

Such a journey and such lessons don’t just stop there. I’m in a zone of clarity and focus. I just want to speak / write out into the universe what it has been speaking to me lately. Still, every day, I face new questions, with many still left unanswered. But it isn’t about getting all the answers right, or even all the answers at all. . . As such, it isn’t about merely completing the journey as much as it is being present, enjoying the process, and learning to find and love yourself along the way.

photo: Dennis Andrade