Película de Portugal

As I was clearing out my room just the other day I stumbled upon the developed film that I got from Portugal, which has been sat in a box for ages but I never got round to scanning! The photos document both the holiday in general and the exploration of the abandoned hotel, and I now present them here only two years late.

The roll of film begins by documenting a wander along the coast, exploring as grutas, the famous grotto formations dotted along the water’s edge. The old Praktica 35mm used to take these photos comes from the 1980s and yields images with a vignette blur but a gorgeously retro feel.

The photos have only been edited very subtly, just to correct fading and colour balance, but they remain largely untouched. This process of taking photos without knowing what you’ve taken is a tonne of fun yet wildly risky, but I find that it’s all worth it when I develop some film which has been sat in my camera for over a year, and in doing so discover photos which I had forgotten that I had taken.

The proceeding photo has to be one of my favourites from the grottos, be sure to click on it to expand and have a nosey. The 35mm film, the old boats and the garish parasols all place the photo in the 70s or 80s, not in August 2015 when it was actually taken.

From there the photos then move to the abandoned hotel, where I feel the old film compliments the eerie subject matter. Tread where you dare.

And for my favourite film snap from my exploration of the hotel, a look over the pool area, where the film medium and the bright sun paint a rather bleak picture of the scene.

For anybody interested, these photos were taken on a partly broken 1980 Pentacon Praktica TL1000 with Kodak ColorPlus 35mm ISO200 film. I say partly broken as the autofocus and ambient light sensors no longer work as it will not accept a battery – so it’s fully manual. If you’ve got any comments or feedback be sure to get in touch – this is still a new world for me!