Making a Moment: Maya Yakobi Captures A Perfect Double Exposure

In our article series, Making a Moment, we’re asking photographers to share one of their favorite photos that they’ve taken. We want to know the story behind the final image and everything that went into making it.

Maya Yakobi ( @mjaa ) is our featured photographer this time. Maya is a 29-year-old Israeli photographer from Jaffa, Tel Aviv. She has been shooting film since the age of 17 when a school friend introduced her to the Diana camera and she immediately fell in love with the medium. She now owns more than 10 Lomo cameras and a few others too.
Maya works with one of Lomography’s partners, Interphoto Film Lab, as a lab technician, which she tells us is “a dream job for a film lover.” When she’s not deeply immersed in the world of film photography she also finds time to make illustrations, and travel as much as possible.

As Maya tells us herself, there are many photos she could have chosen to share for this article. But the one she has picked perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Lomography – an improvised double exposure on expired slide film.

Maya Yakobi: I have so many favorite photos, but I chose this one specifically because it reflects a special moment and surreal feeling I wish to describe in my photographs, and this time I felt I succeeded in capturing the exact moment in two layers of exposure. I got many nice comments about this photo online and in an exhibition it participated in and I’m also really happy with it.

I used my loyal Canon A1 with a 50 mm 1.4 lens, loaded with an expired Agfa Precisa 100, a slide film I knew I would cross-process.

It was taken during a vacation with my boyfriend. We stayed in this lovely Airbnb apartment right in the middle of Amalfi coast, Italy, surrounded by beautiful green mountains and watching the ocean. The first time I entered the room and looked at the square mirror showing only the bed - I knew I had to take a double exposure with this view. As soon as we unpacked our things I took the first photo of the bed inside the mirror frame, I knew I wanted to combine it with the view out of my window, and luckily we had such beautiful weather, so I could take the second exposure right away. I didn’t plan it 100% but I knew approximately where the bed is located in the first exposure and hoped the clouds in the sky would sit on it properly. I was really happy when I saw the scans.

I shoot a lot of expired films and I almost never know what to expect from them, but this time I had a good feeling this film will turn out beautiful and I crossed my fingers so hard for this one. I developed and scanned it in the photo lab I work at these days, Interphoto, the Israeli lomo-shop.

To see more of Maya's photography follow her at her LomoHome and Instagram.

In this series of articles we're asking you to share the story behind your favorite photo. Interested in being featured? Email alex.gray@lomography.com with the subject line - Making a Moment.

written by alexgray on 2022-10-13 #people #making-a-moment #slide-film #mx #multiple-exposure #double-exposure #italy #agfa-precisa-100 #canon-a1 #photo-story #making-a-moment #maya-yakobi