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I hadn’t been to New York City since September 2014. This September – two years later – I finally got to go back. Seraina and I bought a super cheap ticket and booked us a nice and cozy Airbnb in Bed-Stuy.

Luckily, we were able to schedule our trip so I could attend NYCWLK 2.0, a photo walk initiated by Johnny and Rebecca Patience. I didn’t attended the walk the previous year, neither have I been to LNDNWLK, so I didn’t really know what to expect. In addition to the walk, they offered a black & white photography and darkroom printing workshop, which I signed up for.

The workshop started a few hours before the photo walk, so we had the possibility to apply what we’d learned and talked about afterwards. Johnny summed up the topic of the workshop really well on his blog a few weeks ago. I really liked it since I’ve been approaching film photography in a similar way lately, without knowing all the details and theories.

After a Coffee & Cameras mingling event, we started walking from the Brooklyn Roasting Company along the boardwalk through DUMBO and the Brooklyn Heights all the way to Pier 6, then up Atlantic, before finishing the walk at 61 Local on Bergen Street, where we had dinner and a couple of beers. Despite the crazy heat, the photo walk was a really good experience and lots of fun. It was great meeting so many nice and interesting fellow (film) photographers – and to see so many beautiful cameras.

The following day, part 2 of the workshop was on tap. One roll of b&w film was developed overnight for each participant by the guys at the wonderful Bushwick Community Darkroom, which was where the workshop took place as well. I’d love to have a place like that near my home.
The darkroom printing was really inspiring and both Johnny and Rebecca had loads of great advice for us. It’s such a wonderful process to get lost in and it motivated me to work on my personal projects and stuff I like more often, which I’ve hardly found time for recently. I was happy to take my first hand-made print home with me and decided that I really want to do this more often.

At Carmencita Film Lab, they usually scan my negatives on a Fuji Frontier SP-3000. This time, I tried their new Noritsu HS-1800 instead. I might go back to the Frontier since I think I prefer the look, but it was good to try out the Noritsu and I may use it for some of my work in the future.