5 Frames Around the University of Minnesota

My first camera was a Minolta x-370. It was actually my mother’s camera. I shot that camera with reckless abandon from my teens well into my twenties. My eventual wife encouraged me to expand my habit with a class in darkroom film developing and printing. I was instantly hooked. However soon life did that thing it does and ultimately the x-370 was collecting more dust than snapshots. So it sat idle for nearly a decade.

Then came the new year of 2024 and something stirred inside me to dust things off again. Maybe it was because our son was 9 now and I could afford the time to myself. Maybe it was because I was in a stable career so that I could afford, (literally) the film habit, while also being entirely unsatisfied with my career in the trades, and I longed for the creative. Regardless it was time to take another swing at things. I took the x-370 back out and the bug was back with a vengeance.

I love mechanical cameras, and mechanical focus, but for a variety of reasons I wanted something a little more modern. Something with AF to exact. So while committing that most dangerous of acts one day, perusing Facebook marketplace, I came across an ad for a lot of cameras. Now I had read about the Minolta a7 and how great it was. It sounded perfect! This seller had a few Minolta cameras. He did not have an a7 but had a 7000i. Anyone who knows these cameras knows there are stark differences between them but this was available and the price was right, so I impulsively arranged to meet him after work the next day. The camera was in perfect working order, with a clean crisp 50mm 1.7 lens, a mint 70-210mm “beercan” telephoto, lens caps and battery included.

Then I hit eternal struggle I think all photographers come across at least once in their practice… what to shoot? Shoot everything! Shoot anything! That’s what all the creative motivators say. Easier said than done for a family man, with a full time job! When am I going to ever have time to shoot? But I had a new toy to play with, and I had to find something!

Now I’ve been working in the construction trades for 8 years running. Early mornings…very early mornings have become my routine tous les jours. So here I was traversing large, expansive buildings, many over a hundred years old, around the University of Minnesota, in the absolute quiet and stillness of predawn hours. An interesting experience given that in just a few hours, these halls would be bursting with students and faculty, echoing with chatter and academia.

But for a couple of hours every morning, the only sound to be heard was the click of a shutter, and the automatic advance whirring of Kentmere 100 film in a Minolta Maxxum 7000i with a 50mm 1.7 lens, all before the world woke up. These are just a few of those results. All developed in my own darkroom with FPP monobath and DSLR scanned.

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