A good mate, a tank full of petrol, and a destination in mind—that was all we really needed to have a bit of fun back in the eighties. Matt was always the one good at “coming up with a plan,” and it didn’t take much to get us moving: just his car, a few friends, and the open road.
I remember spending a huge amount of time in Brighton when I was younger, so it’s funny now that it remains one of “our” favorite places to visit. There is a nostalgia there that never quite fades. As simplistic as it is in its outcome, this shot of one of the ornate spires on the pier really summed up the light of that time for me. The way the sepia tones hit those lightbulbs feels like a direct bridge to those earlier decades. There are a few more in this series, and I’m thinking I might just post them all under a dedicated Brighton category in the future.
Technically, this was a moment captured on the Nikon FA. I was using a 135mm lens, which allowed me to reach up and isolate the geometry of the spire against the sky. Because this was a film capture from the archives, some of the specific metadata like aperture and shutter speed have been lost to time, but the FA’s reliable Program mode and Pattern metering ensured the exposure held onto that delicate detail in the metalwork.
Digitizing this through Photoshop CS2 gave me the chance to lean into that warm, archival feel. It’s a quiet contrast to the recent “dramatic” workshops, but it’s just as vital to this blogging season. It’s about looking back as much as looking forward.
capture date | 10.09.2006
camera | Nikon FA
lens | 135mm
focal length | 135mm
aperture | n/a
shutter speed | n/a
shooting mode | program
exposure bias | +0.0
metering mode | pattern
ISO | n/a
flash | no
image quality | filmscan
RAW converter | Photoshop CS2
cropped? | no