Recently I visited Belfast for the second time this year, this time only for a short 2 day trip with Fotosoc (my universities photography society whom I went to Berlin with in February) and I decided to make it my first analog only trip, taking only my Canon AE-1 Program and 3 rolls of film. (Lomography Colour Negative 400, AGFA Vista Plus 200 and Kodak BW400CN)

We set off on the 5pm bus from Dublin on the Friday evening and I sat at the front to get a few shots, but seeing as it gets dark at 4 and that I only had ISO 400 film I could only get a few abstract shots.

Once in Belfast we went straight for dinner before heading out for the night (my camera stowed safely back in the hostel!). On the Saturday morning one of my friends and I got up early for a sunrise photo walk. We walked to the river Lagan and took a few photos there before walking back to meet everyone before our days activities.

Our first stop was Queens University where we met the members of ‘Queen’s Photosoc’ who were to give us a tour of Belfast as many of the group hadn’t been there before, I of course took a few snaps as we walked towards our first stop on the tour!

Our first stop was St. George’s Market, a craft market just to the side of Belfast’s city centre. It was lovely to walk around and some of the stalls were fascinating! I bought myself a dream catcher while I was there and also got myself a hot chocolate, which has jumped onto my top hot chocolates list!

From the market we walked to the titanic centre, where we got a chance to walk around and see some of Belfast’s modern architecture as well as having a nice walk down to it alongside the Lagan.

The titanic marked the end of our walking tour with Photosoc, it was great to meet them and talk with similar minded photography folk but we had our next activity booked, a black taxi tour of the Falls, Shankhill and Peace wall.

Being there reminded me of all the Northern Irish history I’d studied and found fascinating and it amazed me how much I could remember! From there we just had time for a quick hot chocolate before the bus back home again.

It was a short but sweet trip and it was great to see Belfast again. The prospect of shooting only on film had me nervous at first as I was only going to get a limited number of shots but it caused me to use my shots more wisely and so I came home with a higher percentage of usable shots. While I don’t think I’ll be shooting exclusively analog on upcoming holidays I’ll definitely be applying it’s sparing principles to my digital photography.