Brooke Comegys: Instagram

I’m a 25 year old idiot who’s been living in Brooklyn on and off since 2012. I went to school for screenwriting but always found myself hanging with the photo kids and even somehow coercing the college to let me use their darkroom facilities and the Senior center to scan (I pissed a few people off with that...oh well.) I originally started taking photos in high school when I had a Photo 101. My dad had his old Canon AE-1 laying around so I decided to shoot with that. It definitely interested me, but I didn’t start carrying a camera around till freshman year of college. I started hanging out with my friend Woody freshman year who didn’t shut up about his Grandpa’s Nikon and was always shooting. We’d hang out in his dorm and he’d spew all this stuff about F-stops and ISO and grain and I would just sit on his bed with a 40 of Old English and somewhat pay attention. Woody lived in the same dorm as this boy who I couldn’t breathe around I liked him so much. (Now you get why I was always in Woody’s dorm?) He happened to be an amazing photographer and I wanted to impress him, so I started shooting more. Well, the crush ended but my love for analog never did. I always tell people how some people have gardening to unwind, or the gym, or crocheting or whatever weird hobby people have to chill out. Mine has been shooting and developing my own stuff.

There’s something about older cameras and their lenses and the viewfinder that just makes things look a little better than real life. It’s that feeling when you let a kid look through it and the first thing they say 9 Times out of ten is “woah.” That’s how I feel every time.

I’ve been shooting with a Yashicamat 124-G for about two years now. I’ve always gravitated towards Black and White film just cause I think my brain thinks better that way. I think I can see the way light is hitting a person or an object and know how it’ll look in B & W. Also, I just love 120 film. I like that I can shoot from the hip easily with my Yashica and know where the square image is going to look best. I recently tried to go back to shooting 35mm on the street and I felt like I was learning to ride a bike again. I couldn’t get the mechanics down. In the future I’d like to eventually get a Mamiya 7 or even the RZ67. I feel like such a nerd writing all this. Whatever.

I really just get in these shooting moods where I bring the camera with me everywhere and I just shoot. I shoot my friends, I shoot interesting people I see on the street. I just really like composition. I try and compose a shot even when I’m sneakily trying to shoot someone I don’t want to know I’m shooting them. It’s the challenge of getting the perfect image with the littlest touch ups when scanning and editing. The images I’m attaching are those that I’m the most proud of cause I got the image I saw in my head in one snap. Are they the best photos? Absolutely not. But they gave me that tiny rush that keeps me shooting when I saw them come out the first time. And that’s what I hope to continue to do for a long time