One day last summer my friend Inge alerted me and some other friends to a contest from Fluster Magazine. It was a film swap contest and she thought that I would be interested in participating. She was right (as you might have guessed). I was very interested. So I filled out the form so I could be partnered with a swap buddy. My buddy was a woman from Singapore and she would be the first shooter. I was really excited at the prospect of collaborating with someone from Singapore! However, two weeks went by and I didn’t hear a word from her. The person in charge of the contest emailed me to check in and I told her that my partner hadn’t gotten in touch yet so she said she would connect me with someone else.

A couple of days later I got a message from my friend Brendan. He said that his Swappa partner didn’t work out and they randomly partnered him with a person named Moni from the USA (me). I thought he was joking. I thought this was his funny way of asking to do another filmswap and so I went along with the joke. My initial assumption was that his Swappa buddy didn’t work out and he was the first shooter, so he had this film swap roll needing a home (crazy how the mind works at 5:30 in the morning). Eventually it became clear that this was no joke. And, indeed, I checked my email and there was something from the organizer introducing Brendan and I as Swappa buddies and giving us instruction on what to do.

So yeah. That was weird.

It just so happens that three of our photos made it into the finals and are in a book.You can preview and purchase the book here.

Here are some of the results from our swap. They turned out really great. My shots were taken at Timberline Lodge and the Japanese Garden in PDX and his in and around Dublin, Ireland.