In September, my wife Christina and I joined a group of other photographers for the second installment of the NYCWLK photo walk, which took place in Brooklyn on a stiflingly humid late-summer day. I brought along my Pentax 67, a hulking beast of a camera that I wouldn't normally have considered except that I'd only had it for a few weeks, and so naturally wanted to shoot with my new "toy."

Still getting accustomed to the camera, I wasn't completely familiar with all the controls, and as we walked along the East River, I framed up a shot and triggered what I *thought* was the depth-of-field preview button, but what turned out to be the mirror lockup. This feature causes the mirror to flip up, blocking the viewfinder and preventing the user from being able to use it to compose an image. Unfortunately, on the Pentax 67 there is no way to flip the mirror back down without exposing a frame of film. So I did my best to make use of the frame: I asked Christina to be my subject, set the aperture to 5.6 or 8 (to give myself some buffer), estimated the distance, and used the scale on my lens to set the focus. Then I lifted the camera to my eye (still unable to see through the viewfinder), pressed the shutter, and hoped for the best.

If only I could recall what I'd said to make her laugh…

Photographer: Joey Pasco
Location: Brooklyn, New York, USA
Camera: Pentax 67
Lens: SMC PENTAX 67 2.4/105
Film: Kodak Portra 400
Scanner: Noritsu
Lab: Richard Photo Lab