It’s gonna be a sad day when film goes the way of the dodo. You had to be careful when you were shooting film, and had to (sorta, kinda) know what you were doing. Véra Ada doesn’t always shoot film, but even her digital shots have that enchanting, timeless, filmy feeling. The golden rule of film: every shot is precious. Véra’s portraits are so many million miles beyond your average sub-par Facebook party snap, you get the impression her photogenic friends must be the inhabitants of some kind of dreamy, picturesque parallel universe. (Secret: they’re not - Véra’s just super awesome at making 
it look that way).

Photographic weapon of choice? Well, 35mm film cameras are always good, but I recently got a medium format, which I’m really loving at 
the moment.

I’m jealous. I’ve always been interested in medium format, but it’s just so insanely expensive. Yeah, for a while I just had a Holga, which is a really cheap way to get into medium format photography. Then I stumbled upon a pretty reasonably priced Mamiya RB67 which weighs almost 3 kilograms. I love it.

My goodness, that’s heavy. I have to carry around a separate bag for it. I should probably get a better bag, actually. And I should probably also get a tripod, because you get a lot of camera shake taking photographs holding the Mamiya. But that’s alright. It’s heavy, but it gets me exercisin’.

Is your approach different, shooting 35mm as opposed to medium format? Or shooting digital as opposed to shooting film? My film shots are simpler and more spontaneous. With digital, I have the chance to plan things out more, and take more shots, but with film I like to keep it simple. The thing with film is that you only get maybe 24 or 36 shots, depending on which film you decide to bring with you, and each shot ends up looking more unique. With digital, you can take hundreds of virtually identical shots, depending on the capacity of your card, and pick and choose your favourites later. So it’s easier with digital, but it’s not so magical. As for medium format, I just need to decide whether I can or can’t actually take a certain photo because the camera is so damn heavy!

Lugging around that Mamiya sounds like a bummer. But the shots look way better, don’t they? Yeah. The quality is much better, because the negatives are massive. And you get that interesting square look with medium format, although with my Mamiya it’s not exactly square – it’s six by seven centimetres. Which is cool.

Do you have any particular kind of film that really appeals to you? I once talked to a guy who would only ever shoot in Fujifilm Velvia 50 and thought everything else was complete and utter rubbish. I’m really interested in exploring all the different kinds of film I can possibly use. I’ve got one roll of film which expired in 1965 which I really wanted to try out. But apparently the only place in the world where you can get the film processed now is in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. So I’m holding off with that little experiment for now…

Inspirations. Go. Um… Francesca Woodman, Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Ryan McGinley, there’s lots. Also, I’ve got a family friend who buys vintage camera parts off eBay and makes his own cameras and then shoots with them – that whole idea is pretty inspiring. His negatives are huge, like sixteen centimetres by six. I’m inspired in equal measure by famous people and people whose work I just happen to see online. There are so many people you just find randomly on Flickr who take the most amazing photos.

Your photographs have a really distinctive feel. What are you drawn to? Well, basically, I’m drawn to people. I’m not really good with landscapes or still lifes. I mean, I really like some landscapes and still lifes, but it’s not something I think I’m capable of myself.

Whenever I think of a photographer giving directions, I can’t help but think of Thomas from Antonioni’s Blow-Up. All, “Grrr, gimme more, baby, ooh yeah, just like that, yes, yes, yes, baby, faster, faster, perfect baby. Oh, I’m spent.” Which is, of course, ridiculous. What’s your process like? Hmm, well I’ll give people a bit of direction, maybe like “Move your head that way”, or “Stand in that corner”, but other than that, I’ll just try to work around them. They can pose however they want to – whatever’s natural for them is good for me.

Where do you like taking photos? Normally, I’ll see a spot in town or in some suburb that really appeals. For a while, I had this real thing for abandoned places, but there aren’t many in Adelaide. I think I’ve used them all up.

Have you gone to that really old abandoned hospital… Yeah.

Damn. It’s called the ‘Julia Farr Home for Incurables’. I tried to go back there recently, actually, and I got a warning. Apparently I’ll get fined if I go back there again. The security has gotten really tight there recently. It’s because a lot of people in the neighbourhood have been complaining that the building attracts deros, so they’ve bumped up the security. It’s a shame.

Any other photogenic abandoned spots you can tell us about? There’s an old art studio behind T-Shirt City on Hindley. It’s pretty much the second half of the building. And there’s an amazing abandoned carpark close to the centre of town, but they’ve locked that up now. I recently tried to get into ‘Gerard and Goodman’, off Rundle, which is like the Holy Grail of abandoned spots in town. I went into the Scout Shop, on the corner of Rundle and Synagogue Place, and they said you might be able to get into Gerard and Goodman from their roof, but I haven’t done that yet. And apparently there are a bunch of great abandoned places in Port Adelaide and in the Hills, which I’ll have to check out sometime…

How about the drains? Zorga’s Tomb, Saint Peter’s Twins – I’ve seen some pretty stunning photos taken in those spots. I’ve gone into the drains down near Botanic Park, but that didn’t work out so well because I’ve got a chronic phobia of cockroaches. It was bad. We went a fair way though. On the walls, it says which streets you’re under, and we got up to the Parade, but then the cockroaches appeared and I freaked out.

What are you working on at the moment? I’m really really, really interested in double or multiple exposures on film. Digital as well, but it’s more interesting with film. I’ve recently started marking the film, so the exposures fall on top of each other properly – before that, it was a bit, all-over-the-shop. So far, it’s been mostly plants and trees, and I’ve just started a roll of film where it’s going to be predominantly double exposures of night-time lights in the city.

Whenever I mention Photoshop in front of photographers, I can see them visibly tensing up and getting really nervous. I guess it’s seen as ‘cheating’ to digitally manipulate photos. What do you reckon? I used Photoshop with digital, not really with film. With film, I’ll just use Photoshop to get rid of dust, or get the colours as true to how they came out in the print, but with digital it’ll be basic colour stuff, no outright photo manipulation. I limit myself to messing around with tones and textures, but won’t go any further than that. If it starts looking obviously manipulated, that’s where you need 
to draw the line. Unless you want it to look like that.

Conversely, it’s seen as a badge of honour to know your way around the darkroom… Yeah, I make black and white prints in the darkroom. Colour’s too much bother, and I don’t think many people offer colour darkroom facilities these days, because you can get a much better result even just going to a one hour photo type place. With colour, you have to mess around with a bunch of different chemicals, and special filters for printing, and you have to get the levels of each chemical perfectly right, which is a headache. The only annoying part of the darkroom process is loading the film onto those little reels, which is panic time for me, because I’m claustrophobic. And with medium format film, it’s even harder, because the film isn’t on a cassette, so you have to take it all off and peel the paper back, and it’s all twisting on the ends… argh!

Do you look back on old work and ask yourself, “Oh, my God, what was I thinking?” Is your style developing, or is there any particular direction you want to push your photography? Right now, I’m not really concerned with moving in any specific direction – I’m more concerned with, basically, just trying out every single thing I can. I really want to get back into Polaroid, but that’s just becoming so expensive because there’s no real demand anymore. Have you heard of the Impossible Project? They bought an old factory and want to re-start the production of film for vintage Polaroid cameras, but they have to somehow make the film without it being exactly the same as the old Polaroid film, because that’s all copyrighted, so it has to be similar but slightly different, or something ridiculous like that…

To give Polaroid credit, they do have that new PoGo digital mobile printer, which looks kinda nifty… I guess it’s not the same, though. Yeah, it’s much more fun working with the actual Polaroid film, because you can do really cool stuff, like squeeze certain parts of the film to get effects, peel bits apart, pour water inside, develop the film in the freezer or over a toaster, or in the microwave. And depending on what sort of Polaroid camera you have, you can do some cool stuff like multiple exposures…

Closing thoughts, Véra? Give me some kind of grand statement about photography. A lot of people say photography is easy to get into, especially with digital. But photo taking can be a bit of a headfuck, sometimes. When you find out how much more there is to it, and how much little you really know… it’s actually a little depressing. Then again, it’s also sort 
of fantastic.