People of Rochester - Rudy

I was at the Lucky Flea Market, standing in the shade of a tree on a street corner, when I noticed Rudy, a few feet from me, loading film into his 35mm SLR camera, a Nikon FE2. I thought it was interesting to see a young man with a vintage film camera, and I asked what got him interested in film photography.

His father worked at Kodak for 30 years, but Rudy didn't become interested in photography until after his father had retired. It started, he said, when he was shooting pictures with his iPhone. Rudy often shot pictures of people, and he said many people have asked him to shoot photos of them because they liked photos of others he had captured.

He said, “Photography found me, in a way.” Rudy was inspired to advance in photography while he was shooting photos exclusively with his iPhone, and people kept praising the results he was getting.

His first dedicated camera was digital, but he wasn’t fond of the look of images from that camera. When he was visiting friends in Kentucky, in August 2020, Rudy went to an antique store and found a film camera. It was his first time shooting with film. He liked the results and decided to buy a vintage SLR (single-lens-reflex) camera, a Nikon FM2 (fully manual).

He didn't understand shutter speed or aperture at first, but he’s enjoyed the learning process. He’s self-taught, and YouTube was his main resource for learning. “YouTube was my biggest teacher,” he said.

When I met Rudy, he said this was his second weekend shooting at the Lucky Flea Market. He said people were coming up to him and requesting that he shoot a photo of them. A woman had approached him earlier and said she was hoping he would ask him to shoot a photograph of her. “That was my moment of the day,” he said.

He also carries a Fujifilm X-E4 digital camera. Rudy’s not fond of post-processing, and the X-E4 has filters that simulate film, so if he wants instant gratification, the digital camera does the trick. The film and digital cameras “go hand-and-hand with me, wherever I go,” he said.

When he does edit images, Rudy uses his iPhone’s native image-editing tools. “I spent a thousand dollars on the iPhone anyway, so I might as well use the tools I have.”

“And that’s where people are looking at photos the most,” he said.

Meeting and chatting with Rudy was “my moment of the day.”

Thanks, Rudy!