Through the Ground Glass
Lisa, mid-1980s. Shot on the Yashica 635, Kodak black-and-white film. The era, the look, the feel — it’s all right here.
Some cameras are just tools.
Others become part of your story.
My Yashica 635 is the latter — a dual-format TLR that’s been with me since the 1980s, when my old boss at a one-hour photo lab handed it to me with the kind of quiet encouragement I didn’t fully understand back then.
That job was my first real connection to photography. Not just shooting — but processing. The rhythm of film canisters, enlargers, timer beeps. The smell of developer trays. That anticipation people felt waiting for prints to come out of the machine — it was all part of the magic.
This camera didn’t just put me behind a lens. It plugged me into a process.
And more than 40 years later, the damn thing still works.
It’s fully manual. No battery, no automation, no LCD. Just glass and gears. Shutter and soul. And that’s what I love about it.
I’ve taken photos with this Yashica in the ’80s, the ’90s, the 2000s — and even as recently as 2018. It’s crossed decades with me. And the negatives hold up.
That’s the beauty of medium format.
That’s the beauty of analog.
There’s something deeply grounding about holding a camera that doesn’t care what year it is. It doesn’t buzz or boot. It doesn’t notify or distract. It just asks: what do you see?
And if you’re patient, it answers: here it is.
I’ve spent a lot of my life “trying.” Trying to prove, trying to improve. But cameras like this remind me: you don’t always have to try.
You can just shoot. Just be.
You can let go of the noise and get back to the frame.
A different frame, a different decade. Kodak VPS 160, 1988.
🔗 Want more?
I've posted a small gallery of images made with the Yashica 635 — a timeline of light, grain, and learning.
