This year I’ve been lucky enough to travel quite a bit, for both work and personal reasons, and I’ve made the most of it to shoot plenty of film.

This time I want to share my experience visiting Asturias, in northern Spain. It was a trip I wanted to take at a slower pace for personal reasons—just enjoying the beautiful landscapes of the north without any rush.

As with my recent trips, I brought my Contax with the 45mm pancake lens. In a place like this, I was especially grateful not to have brought a digital camera. My memories of the trip would have been completely different if I had been constantly checking a screen after every shot, taking 200 photos of the same view. Shooting film forces me to slow down, be more intentional, and simply look around.

That said, on this trip I did feel some of the 139Q limitations. Even with the pancake lens not being particularly fast, I sometimes wished for more shutter speed so I could shoot wider open and get more separation between layers in certain scenes. And since I already own a couple of Contax lenses, and want to stay in the system (Carl Zeiss, you know…), I’ve been browsing other bodies that could give me a bit more flexibility. But more on that soon.

Of course, it rained on many days (it is the north, after all) but I was lucky to get some stunning weather when I visited places like the Lagos de Covadonga, Senda de los Acantilados de Cabo Vidío or Faro de Cabo Peñas.

The way I planned my excursions meant I got to see quite a few sunsets, and in a matter of minutes the light would change dramatically. It’s one of those small rewards that makes me glad I took the trip slow.