Old Faithful by Reife Braun

As far as years go, 2018 was fantastic. I was able to spend 5 months in the Sunshine Coast, a month in Indo, a few weeks in Tassie and a couple months at home... But sadly, I only had my crappy little $3 op shop point and shoot film camera to journey with me.

I started the year off in a huge creative buzz, and my camera was getting a serious work out, so I decided that, hey, it’s time for an upgrade. Little did I know what was going to unfold when I tried to sell my old faithful Canon 7d. 

To cut a long story short, a lady named Ruth (who was probably a man, named Gary or something) was working hard to catfish me and sent me fraudulent PayPal documents, and well, I bought into it and lost all my gear (yes, there is more too the story than that, but we’ll save that for another time)

But hey, it might have been a blessing, because lugging around a huge backpack full of lenses and a water housing isn’t too much fun anyway! Plus instead of shooting surf everyday, I got so surf, so it was a lose - win kinda situation!

I kinda thought that maybe I should focus on other things in my life, like getting a ‘real’ job or something, but the trigger happy gremlin that lives within me just wanted to keep hearing the sweet sound of the shutter releasing, so the little point and shoot followed me around everywhere.

It’s a funny thing shooting analogue. I went into it thinking, hey, the camera cost me $3, I’ll save so much money shooting with this... until I calculated how much film I used and worked out that I spent almost $1500 on film and getting my photos developed, haha, so much for cheap...

So coming into 2019, I’ve put my trusty $3 camera to rest and picked up a new digital toy, and well, I think the idea of possibly getting a ‘real’ job that crossed my mind last year, well, that’s history now.

@reifevisuals