One Roll a Month

How it started

Most of my photographs are taken on the X100V, which is wonderful and also far too forgiving. I can take forty frames of the same doorway, check every one on the screen and keep the best. Last winter I realised I hadn’t been surprised by a photograph of mine in years.

So in January I took an old Olympus Trip 35 off the bookshelf, bought twelve rolls of colour film and made myself a few rules.

• One roll a month, thirty-six frames, Lisbon only.
• One frame per scene. No second tries.
• No looking at anything until the roll is developed.

Where it is now

It’s October, so I’m on roll ten. I drop each finished roll at a small lab near Rato and pick up the scans about a week later, which has become one of my favourite small rituals of the month. I open the folder on the balcony with a coffee and no idea what’s waiting.

The results are wildly uneven. March is mostly my thumb. June, shot during the Santo António festivities, is full of smoke from sardine grills and faces lit orange by strings of bulbs. August is almost entirely shadows on walls, because it was too hot to go anywhere else.

The best frame so far is of Dona Fernanda hanging washing from her window, caught at exactly the moment a sheet billowed out over Rua da Graça. I’ll never be able to take it again, which is rather the point.

What comes next

When roll twelve is done I’ll pick one frame from each month and print them small. If you’d like to see how I shoot day to day, read Learning to see with one lens, or browse Photography.