PEI on 35mm — Coasting Toward Blue

Summer 2022. A campervan, a road trip to Prince Edward Island, and, packed among a handful of modern digital cameras, an Olympus XA point-and-shoot 35mm camera loaded with Kodak Gold 200.

Amidst the many digital images I made on that trip, I found the most joy in snapping photos on this tiny camera, not quite knowing how they’d turn out.

Let’s just say I’m pretty damn pleased. Light leaks and grain, less than sharp focus, and colors that take me back to my childhood…imperfect photos that somehow seem, well, perfect to me.

One of my first images on the roll—the Confederation Bridge, which connects the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, as shot from the Cape Jourimain Nature Centre in New Brunswick.

Looking back at these images, I’m transported back to those June days spent in one of my favorite places. Yet, they could just as easily be images in a childhood photo album, photos with their backs stuck against the ribbed backing under the page’s plastic sheath.

*Our first night: Linkletter Provincial Park. Our camper: 2022 Pleasure-Way Tofino*

*Our van and the Cape Egmont Lighthouse*

*G and the windmills at North Point Lightstation, on the western tip of the island*

*Dalvay by the Sea, where we spent our 20th anniversary during our 2019 road trip and our 23rd anniversary this year*

*Light leak against lupines, Red Point Provincial Park*

Looking back at these images, I’m transported back to those June days spent in one of my favorite places. Yet, they could just as easily be images in a childhood photo album, photos with their backs stuck against the ribbed backing under the page’s plastic sheath.