Unashamed holiday snaps
Roll one of two rolls of Portra shot in Porto in March 2025
As I mentioned here, I made the schoolboy error of letting my film go through x-ray machines at both Porto and Lisbon airports last month.
Luckily the fine folk at https://pppcameras.co.uk/lab did a sterling job of developing and scanning and managed to remove any colour cast.
To say I was happy with the results was an understatement, my film photography has been woefully hit and miss over the last few years, because I did so little of it, so for 2025 I decided I’m concentrating on retraining my analogue technique.
I’ve recently been enjoying viewing photographers’ contact sheets (the most recent being in the video for this Paul McCartney exhibit - https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2025/paul-mccartney/ ) - so in the same spirit I’ll share all 12 images from my 2 rolls of Portra.
Roll 1 - Kodak Portra 160
The only subject I had planned to photograph was this New York Guggenheim-like car park, the Silo Auto - a 1964 structure designed by Alberto José Pessoa and João Abel Bessa.
Prior to the image of Silo Auto I’d been taken by this church nestled amongst the mid century blocks in the morning light.
With a visit to Serralves on the agenda, complete with the museum designed by one of my favourites, Alvaro Siza Vieira, my wife may have been concerned I’d be lost in my photography - but I enjoyed the architecture without lifting my camera for a change. While walking through the gardens I indulged myself a little.
The first two images on the roll were a view across the Douro to Gaia and a rooftop view from our hotel balcony, a winding glitch causing the images to overlap - luckily these weren’t “keepers”.
My favourite image of the trip is below, the view downriver to the Ponte Da Arrabida - because it includes the route by which we cycled to the sea, a hotel roof terrace and another hotel’s bar where we watched the world go by - a real holiday memory wrapped up in 6cm x 6cm of celluloid.
The remaining two images of the 12 on the first roll were also of Gaia rooftops, but to me, less memorable.
Lovely stuff Irv. The Silo Auto looks all sorts of interesting.
Love that shot that has so many memories in it 🤩