The best thing about starting my film photography podcast, Matt Loves Cameras, three years ago is the connection it’s brought me to the film community. I’ve appeared as a guest on other film photography podcasts, I’ve run competitions, and I’ve produced community photo zines.
Without a doubt though, the highlight has been the conversations I’ve had with photographers all over the world. The only thing that tops that is meeting up with a fellow film photographer in real life. When the opportunity arose recently to do a photowalk with one of my online friends, I was in.
YouTuber Lucy Lumen and I met through Instagram a few months ago. When I saw her images, instantly I knew she was based on the sunny Gold Coast, just an hour’s drive south of where I live. Lucy suggested we meet up and swap point and shoot cameras, so on a very warm Spring day, I handed over my Canon AF35ML and Lucy handed me her Nikon LD35AF. With strong light and vibrant beachside colors everywhere, Kodak Ektar seemed to be the perfect choice for both of us.
We had such a fun time walking around Kirra and Coolangatta taking photos of architecture, street scenes, and anything else that took our fancy. We chatted about design, zines, dream cameras, photographic inspiration, and lots of other topics.
In some ways, Lucy and I have similar styles — we both love point and shoots, and we both love color film. Throughout the walk, we often gravitated to the same places to take a shot. One interesting difference is that Lucy tends to favor vertical compositions whereas most of my images were horizontal.
Behind the scenes is Lucy’s partner Lux, who not only does a fantastic job with the videography, but he also composes the 80s inspired synth tunes that go along with Lucy's videos. For this episode, he also composed a classic surf-inspired tune to set the scene.
I’d love to hear what you think of the video and the images we took on our photowalk, and I hope to meet up with Lucy and Lux again soon to do it all again.
Why is anything a video?