Coming back home for a holiday break is always exciting. I tend to keep my fingers crossed, hoping for a Winter weather in Latvia and this time (second time in a row actually) I was lucky enough to have a bit of proper cold and snow.
The type of light a crispy Winter day provides is really hard to beat, and it's once in a year kind of opportunity of capturing it, so I had to be quite proactive. The problem is that the light day in the wintertime doesn't last long, which means plenty or pre-planing, weather checks and early starts. I was exploring mostly Riga and its suburbs, especially seaside. Temperature wise it felt quite doable, something between -7 and -13 °C – you can walk for hours with an extra layer of warm clothes on.
I brought a few 35mm and medium format cameras to Riga, but ended up using just one – my new favourite Bronica SQ-AI. It has plenty of quirks, but I still love it, besides this time the camera proved it can survive cold, moisture and even heavy snowfall. In terms of films stocks, I decided to stick to Kodak Portra 400 for colour (shot at the box speed) and Kodak Tri-X bow black and white. Exceptional dev&scan job by Canadian Film Lab.
