Sricharan Yadali, M1, Class of 2025
Last year I unearthed my parents’ old Pentax point-and-shoot that they purchased in the mid 1990s. Upon asking them about the camera, my parents told me about fond memories that they had using it to capture their first few years in a new and foreign land. To all of our surprises, it still worked! I quickly purchased some film and took the camera with me on family trips. When I got scans of my pictures back, I was astounded.
There was something about the warmth and character of film that I fell in love with. Even with zero photographic experience, I had noticed the way it captured light and the hues and tones that were produced were unlike anything I’d ever seen. With that, I’d resolved to get out of the house nearly every day I could to go walk around and just photograph anything that caught my eye. Initially, it was just something slow and deliberate to pass the time during lockdown. But over the past year, this hobby has come to mean a lot more to me. As I worked on honing my compositional awareness and got better at nailing the exposures, I also inadvertently practiced being more patient with myself and allowing myself to be more comfortable making mistakes. This hobby has led me to look at even my everyday surroundings in a different way and explore creative outlets that I had never afforded myself before. I present my photograph, Plaza Art Festival at Sunset. It represents the happiness and warmth that I felt at seeing my city come back to life and show strong signs of recovery after the heights of the pandemic. It represents the vibrancy and resilience of our city and our community, and how much that life here has to offer. Shot using 35 mm Kodak Ektar 100 film.
Med Intima 