Alyssa is a photographer who’s basically been glued to a camera since she was eight, and came about her first film camera during a closet cleanup. She’s got a real love for film, great light, and beautiful cars with personality. her style has this calm, nostalgic vibe you instantly feel.
I won’t spoil too much, so let’s jump in and let her tell the rest.
Age (or age range): 24
Where you live and/or where are you from?
Born and raised in and around Los Angeles
What is your earliest memory with a camera?
On my eighth birthday I was gifted a small pink digital camera by my parents. There was something soberingly official about getting my own personal camera to use whenever I wanted. It immediately became my most prized possession. I used it to document my brothers, my cat, the family road trips we took every summer, and the short films my cousins and I came up with in the late hours of family parties. Having a piece of gear to take care of and carry with me—usually via a very stylish carabiner hooked onto very stylish knee length shorts—lit a spark that would gently burn for a decade, until I started exploring film photography in earnest.
Do you remember your first roll of film?
I do! The pandemic had just begun, and I’d been kicked out of my university dorm halfway through freshman year. I was looking for a hobby to pass the time and procrastinate on my school work. Cleaning out the deepest corner of a closet back home, I found my mom’s old Canon Rebel G begging for use after being set aside in favor of digital cameras and phones in the early 2010s. I dusted it off, popped in a new battery and the cheapest roll of film Amazon offered, and set out to try my hand at the medium. I distinctly remember that first roll coming back to me underexposed and underwhelming, but I was hooked and knew that I wanted to try again (and again…)
What drew you to photographing cars?
I love photographing beautiful things. And the cars I’m drawn to are exactly that: beautiful, colorful, gleaming works of art that reflect the eras they were designed in. As subjects, they’re some of the most stunning time capsules. But I think what really draws me to them lies beyond their beauty. It's how they can transport a photo into another time and shift a frame’s entire feel from modern to nostalgic.
Do you have a favorite lens when shooting cars?
I usually don’t plan ahead when I shoot cars.I bring a camera pretty much everywhere, so if one catches my eye, I just use whatever I’ve got on me to capture how it feels in the moment. I like keeping my gear minimal, which usually means one of two setups: the 50mm prime lens on my Minolta Maxxum 7000 or the 38–140mm zoom on my trusty Olympus Mju. Both are basic but versatile in all the ways I need them to be. Working within the limits of what I happen to have on hand at any given time has, I think, made me a more adaptable photographer.
Is there a photographer, artist or genre that influences your photography and why?
There are too many to name! My graphic designer mom, for starters, had the first and biggest influence on my lifelong affinity for creative expression. I vividly remember her teaching first-grade me about perspective and showing me how the sky and the grass in a crayon drawing could actually touch instead of sitting as thin blue and green strips on opposite ends of the paper. Truly groundbreaking stuff for an emerging six-year-old artist. Beyond the family artists, painters like Mark Maggiori and Logan Maxwell Hagege will forever inspire with their beautiful depictions of the American landscape (a favorite subject of mine). I also think a lot about Wim Wenders, whose use of light, color, and desolate scenery has informed how I see open space and mood. And lately, I’ve been drawn to photographers like Barbara Bosworth and Justine Kurland who both highlight quiet emotion in the natural world, and Jeremy Paige, whose LA-based street photos always stop me in my tracks. And in the realm of music, bands like Ween remind me to stay curious and never put myself in a stylistic box.
How big of a part does lighting play in your photography?
Lighting is huge for me. The longer I’ve shot, the more I’ve found myself holding off taking photos if the light isn’t where I want it. Sometimes I bend my own rules and shoot a frame or two anyway for my archive, but I generally prefer to wait for lighting that makes me excited to see the final photo. When light is glinting off chrome in just the right way, or a slab of warm sunset is splashed across the hood of a car—when I know there is potential for something special because of interesting lighting—that’s when I feel most compelled to press the shutter.
How do you choose which photos to share?
It’s a horrible and extremely painful process. I’ve accumulated thousands of photos at this point, and honestly, I love most of them either because of the memories attached or the visual appeal of the final image. Narrowing them down to what the broader world might consider postable or shareable is something I find very hard to do. But I try. My posts are sporadic because life is sporadic, but when I do share photos they’re either very new and exciting and fresh in my mind, or they’re ones I took a while ago that I keep coming back to and enjoy looking at even months or years after they were originally taken. Overall, it’s not that deep: if I like it, I share it.
What’s your go-to film camera for shooting and what would be your dream film camera to shoot with?
My go-to for the past few years now has been the Minolta Maxxum 7000. Funnily enough, it wasn’t even a camera I picked out myself—it was a gift. One of the best in recent memory, actually, because it’s been such a workhorse and so reliable in every condition. This camera is, in my opinion, criminally underrated, and I think I’ll always own one.
As for a dream camera, I’m not sure I have one. I’ve never been very gear-driven and tend to focus more on what I’m capturing than what I’m capturing it with. That said, it’s always nice to upgrade and expand my knowledge when I can. I’d love to experiment with a medium format camera soon, something like a Hasselblad 500CM or Mamiya 7 II, to see how it changes the photography experience and the feel of my photos.
Have you ever taught someone else how to shoot film? How was the experience?
I haven’t taught someone from scratch, but I’ve definitely talked about film photography with friends enough that some have decided to give it a shot and see what all my hype is about. It’s really fun comparing notes and photos afterward, seeing what everyone gravitates toward and how differently we all see the same world.
Which car have you been waiting to shoot and have yet to encounter?
Anything chromed out in a paint color you just don’t see anymore gets me excited. But if I ever come across a ’63 Chevrolet Corvette Split Window in the wild, I’ll probably burn through a roll or two out of sheer adrenaline. What a beautiful & unique car.
Have you ever completely messed up a roll? What happened and what did you learn from it?
Of course! Haven’t we all? I don’t think I could call myself a photographer if I hadn’t. Not too long ago, for one example, I opened the back of my camera to take out a finished roll…before rewinding the film. A huge chunk of it was exposed, and I probably ended up with a third of the roll totally lost, a third drastically altered, and a third mostly untouched. As frustrating as it was to make such an obvious mistake, it made me appreciate the surviving images more, find beauty in the altered and overexposed ones, and rethink how I shot the “deleted” photos for the next time I visited that area.
Has film photography changed the way you see the world or appreciate everyday details?
Entirely. When I started shooting film, I wanted something that would force me to slow down, be more intentional, and really feel what I was doing behind the camera. I’ve been able to apply those same principles to how I see the world, too. I’m more thoughtful when I enter new spaces. I give myself time to notice what’s actually worth capturing before even taking a camera out of my bag. I focus on small details that might tell a story more effectively than a scene as a whole. Film photography has taught me to see quiet, mundane moments not as boredom, but as small scenes worth paying attention to.
What’s the best advice you’ve received about photography — and who gave it to you?
Not sure where I heard this one: “Before you take a photo, ask yourself, ‘Why?’” It’s saved me countless rolls of film and a good amount of post-scan disappointment. Instead of shooting on autopilot and ending up with photos that say nothing new, I’m reminded to slow down and actually connect with what’s in front of me. Taking that extra moment to ask why helps me be more deliberate and keeps my contact sheets from turning into a page of uninspired duplicates.
What do you hope to transmit with your photographs?
I aim to evoke a feeling of quiet solitude with my photographs, capturing the beauty of a world that floats between past and present–sun-bleached houses, quiet streets, natural landscapes that could belong to any decade. I’m drawn to moments that might seem unremarkable and try to notice what makes them worth a second look. Really, I hope that my photos reflect how I see the world–not in some groundbreaking way, but in a way that lets me look back later and recognize what mattered to me at the time. Whether I accomplish that or not, I can’t say. But I do hope that over time, my work continues to grow outward from a reflection of my own perspective to something that speaks more about the world than about me.
Is there anything that you'd like to promote? I.e. Your business website and what you do, other social channels, or projects you wanna promote?
Just my Instagram, @alyssalassosthemoon, at the moment! Everything else filters through there.
