The Babushka Crops - in film format

In spite of the fact that October is underway, my daughter (and I) is still enjoying some of the sweetest strawberries of this year. My Babushka took care of this and she planted this year some special sort of strawberries that are blooming and giving fruits as long as there is enough temperature, not only during the months of May and June.

And those strawberries are the sweetest motherfuckers that I've ever tasted. Our Romanian sort only blooms during late spring and its offspring that managed to mutate in time, are blooming around that period anyway. They are bigger or smaller, more sweet or more sower but the blooming time is when spring changes to summer. Well, these ones are incredibly good and the fact that they produce all summer long makes all this fuss about "genetically modified plants" worthwhile.

It's a treat for any kid, I think, to get to interact some good years with their grandparents as my kid does. She gets the best things out of the garden of Babushka and sometimes I have to recognize that I'm a little bit jealous as I was the beneficiary of those treats before. Now the only "treat" I get is the chance to shoot some stills with my Canon and take the opportunity of the way the autumn fruits pose for me. The eating of those fruits is now in somebody else's attributions.

Somehow I love using film during autumn. Sun is a little bit milder and it can serve a good purpose even when it's up there, at 12 o'clock.

I got to eat that pear... she somehow didn't like it, being obsessed with new tastes, the ones we find in the markets, brought from Africa or even South America. This yellow fellow over here had the old taste of the Balkan pears: a little bit sandy on the texture but damn it compensates through the flavour and the sweetness. Young ones don't know to appreciate or we are so hooked on the old tastes, reminding us of our youth...

I fall in love more and more with this camera with each roll of film I use and develop. Look at the details! This is a '70s camera and on the "auto" mode it gets almost every time the best it can do on its level. Even without the autofocus available, this camera together with the 50mm lens I have on it is still a sturdy companion and it's always a treat when I'm waiting for the film to be ready at the shop. It's that waiting like in the Christmas Eve when you can't fall asleep as a kid, only thinking about what those presents under the tree are going to be like...

The grapes are done for, I know. Not the best year for grapes anyway. The reason I took this one here is to try and play with the bokeh and the light coming through the leaves, but also try to get some colour contrast and see how the camera is holding on, by playing with the green and dark orange of the fall leaves. Even though the subject (the grape) is out of focus and though the day was pretty cloudy, this camera gives you something back. It may not be the sharpest thing out there but for sure is one of those cameras that also captures the mood together with the light.