Back in the summer I was fortunate to work in New York City for a couple of months on the World Cup for ITV. Basically NYC is a street photography dream and so in the bag went far too many cameras, lenses and rolls of film to shoot in any down time we had.
I was conscious of how hot the city gets in June/July, so I definitely didn’t want to be lugging heavy bags of gear around the city. Whilst my great Fuji X-E5 was the street workhorse for digital content (check out the shots here that I took with that), coupled with my Leica M6 for 35mm film work, I wanted something specifically for more calmer moments and in particular some street portraits.
My Rolleiflex 2.8F was going to be perfect for this. This medium format 1950’s film camera just takes the most sublime images and I love the square format look of it too.
Approaching NYPD police officers for a portrait is definitely not something in my comfort zone, but after a while there and realising that they are in fact incredibly friendly, I summoned up some courage to ask.
I will say that the Rolleiflex is definately an ice breaker in these situations and opens doors to getting a portrait, as people are just very curious about it and most having not seen one before.
There is a saying that ‘gear doesn’t matter’ which can be true of course, but I’d also say it very much does matter for me, as if a camera motivates you to want to pick it up and use it then that’s all that matters.
