Reversing Course
Or back to film photography
I could not remember when was the last time I loaded a roll of film into a camera. As time moves forward, I walk backwards. That is what I thought when I enrolled in the photography course series by Adam Katseff at Stanford. I had to scramble to get a film camera. The good news, black and white. The bad news, film, chemicals, dark rooms, lots of papers, and huge amounts of time invested.
Actually the bad news turned out to be good news, but anyway, I will get back to that some other day. For a while I was not sure how I felt about it. The first day out with the film camera it was really odd. I could not chimp on a digital display to check if I got the right exposure. I could not delete the exposure and try again correcting what I did not like. I could not know actually if I had screwed up anything. To make it even more interesting, I may not ever know if I screwed it up since I had to develop the film my self also and that is also another chance for things go wrong.
When I was a kid and shot film, it was easy. You went out, shooted some stuff, and then you went to a store and dropped the film. Magically you got some negatives, to which you pay little to no attention and some prints that fade away with time. Now I was sitting in a dark room with a can opener trying to get the film out of the canister to load it into the rails hoping to place it in the developing canisters with lots of funky smelling chemicals. Did I mentioned that the dark room in this part of the process has no safe light and the only vision you have is your memory, mental model of the space, and your touch senses?
Then if you are lucky you get a negative, which, once you get back to the dark room, you can use in the enlargers to make real prints—now with safe lights available. And there, lots of wasted paper on test strips, and doging and burning practice. After hours of having no clue, something clicks and you may get one semi decent print. That is a day for celebration.
Some days are better than others. Some days have the passion of infusing change. Some days are dull as a doornails. Some days you just print your first contact sheet and wonder why you do this. But you know there is no way back, you cannot go back, you cannot let it go. Yes, photography, or how to feel lost and found at every turn. It has been more than six months since I started with film, and I am still at it. It has something. Not sure if it is the faith on getting the image you want, or the lack of feedback while shooting, or the extra thinking you pour into it obsessing not to screw it up, or the feeling of the grain. And, you are still at it and you cannot let it go.
Hence, I decided to start writing down some of these unconnected thoughts. I just decided that if I write them down, maybe some day I could make some sense out of them.
