My last night in the city captured on CineStill 800 film
It took months for me to get my hands on a batch of CineStill 800 film. I finally got some from the local film supplier and paid a fortune for it since the brand is somewhat rare in South Africa and extremely sought after with a cult-like following. This type of film renders beautiful soft tones on images and is used for low light photography, often producing beautiful portraits and illuminated night time street scenes and cityscapes. I’ve been traveling with four rolls and with Sao Paulo not being nearly as exciting as Hong Kong, Tokyo or New York for night time photography, I was saving these rolls for a different suitable situation maybe to be used in Buenos Aires or Santiago.
On my last day in Sao Paulo, I walked around the city with my friend Bianca. She showed me the historical centre of the city and we had lunch afterwards. The city center is a great place for street photography with thousands of different interesting characters moving around like ants. She mentioned that they had access to the rooftop of their apartment building close to Central and I thought about what the night lights at sunset should look like on the rooftop. I only had slide film left mostly and my black and white film I was saving for Rio so the idea of shooting a roll of Cinestill started to grow on me.
We took the subway back to her apartment and met up with her roommates. The rooftop had a beautiful, almost panoramic view of the neighborhood and music could be heard from the streets as people were commuting back home from work and started going out for the night. The girls were having a spliff on the roof and I was capturing the moment and soaking up my last night in Sao Paulo, a city that I had come to love.
All photos were taken by me and are left unedited.
Shot on a Nikon FE 2
Photographs by Carl van der Linde
Story by Carl van der Linde