Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.” – André Bazin
I have been shooting digital ‘instant’ images for the past ten years. I love the fact that I can get instant visual feedback from the images, and that I can shoot many shots and not worry about the cost. Best of all, I don’t need a dark room to develop my photos. So why would I want to go back to analogue technology? This has nothing to do with a nostalgic notion of ‘a real photographer shoots with film’ or the idea that analogue photos have a different, more organic feel to them. I disagree with both of these points.
What I do like about film based photography is the rhythm of how I take the photos. It is slower and often more deliberate. As I don’t get a chance to delete shots that I don’t like, I taker longer to compose and frame my images. Of course, I could do the same with digital but I tend to shoot faster and more often with my digital camera. My old SLR and Rangefinder are also manual cameras, and this helps me to slow down.
This week I bought a box of cheap 35 mm film and loaded up all of my old cameras as I am going to explore a slower pace of photography.
I will still see the world at 1/125 sec, but I will take longer to get there.
In Transit 