The first roll of the year, finally

The roll that went into the Bessa on the second of January came out of it on a Sunday at the end of April. Thirty-six frames in almost four months. It was already half shot when I started this notebook. I am not proud of the pace.

Winter was slow. I do not mean the weather, which was mild and wet, more slush than snow. I mean me. In January I left for work in the dark and came home in the dark, and the camera stayed on the shelf by the door with the strap hanging down. A few times I carried it to the office in my bag and back again without once opening the bag. The film was HP5 at box speed, which in a Helsinki January is optimistic.

I dropped it at the lab and picked it up on Friday, the day after Vappu, when the city still looked a little tired. The lab cuts the negatives into strips of six and sends the scans as a download link. I always open the link on my phone on the tram, which is a mistake, because everything looks better on a phone.

On the laptop it was clearer. Most of the winter frames are grey. Not dark, not light, just grey, the way a negative looks when there was no sun and I gave it a stop less than it wanted. Held up to the kitchen window, that end of the roll is thin enough to read through. Kallio streets under low cloud. A row of bicycles nobody had moved since November. The same bare tree in Karhupuisto twice, apparently because I forgot I had already taken it.

There are four I like. A man sweeping the winter gravel off the pavement on an early April morning, his breath just showing. My mother's coffee cup on the windowsill in Tampere, with steam against the dark glass. Kallio church at the top of Siltasaarenkatu with evening sun on the tower. And one from the shore at Kaivopuisto where the sea is a flat pale grey and a single walker is small on the left. I did not plan that one. I think I was waiting for the meter lights in the viewfinder to stop flickering.

Since then the evenings have been light, and there is a blackbird in the courtyard that will not stop. I put a new roll of HP5 in on Sunday. Twelve frames already, in two evenings.