Why Film

I’m often asked about why, as a photographer, I choose to primarily shoot film. Well, maybe the topic doesn’t come up often, but certain situations do elicit the usual questions (like when my parents found out how much I spent on my heavily neglected Sony A7iii). The usual answers I’ve heard from other photographers typically revolve around topics of nostalgia, of the real film ‘look’, and evoking an aesthetic that may be difficult to recreate as a digital photographer.

These are all fine reasons, and align somewhat with why I use this medium, but they seem to lack substance compared to the general challenges involved with film. First of all, it is undeniably expensive. A typical roll of 35mm film sets me back around $10, but this can easily creep upwards for more niche stocks. Then there is the development and scanning, which is another $20 on top of that. Film is inconvenient to shoot; You’re heavily limited by the number of shots on the roll, and I’m painfully aware that every click of my shutter costs me a dollar or more. Film is more inflexible as well, and can limit your shots in come cases. If the sun starts setting while out with my digital camera I can effortlessly change my white balance and ISO to maintain crisp, quick shutterspeeds. If my film camera is loaded with a low sensitivity roll my shots can quickly turn into a blurry mess. On top of all that, there is the waiting. You take a photograph and then… that’s it. You don’t get to see the results, good or bad, until sometimes weeks later.

That waiting is actually one of the reasons I first began to embrace film photography. I began my journey with a digital camera, my mom’s cheap point and shoot from the early 2000s. From then on I became attached to the device, and the screen on the back. The instant feedback made me more interested in the photograph I’d just taken than the scene I’d just photographed. This trend continued for years, and I noticed that my camera would actually get in the way of my experience. After some time, I began leaving my camera at home so it wouldn’t be a distraction. When I began to embrace film I realized I could also begin embracing the present I surrounded myself in. Once a shot is taken there is no going back. There’s no mulling over the details of color and composition. There’s no lining up a second, third, tenth shot to try recapturing a scene. With film, once the shot is taken its done, just like the individual moment that was captured. Film allows me to actually experience the environment for what it is instead of getting bogged down in what it was.

There is also an undeniable hint of nostalgia that I try to evoke with my work. This, however, is not a nostalgia for some vague point in the deep past. Instead, my goal is to elicit feelings of an exact moment in time captured in lasting form. Memories are not sharp and exact, not mine at least. They’re grainy, fuzzy in the details, colored by emotion and highly interpretive. With my digital camera I have no problems capturing a shot in excruciating detail, every single aspect in frame perfectly preserved. This has its uses, of course. For example, I use my digital camera when shooting professional portraits where artistry is not the goal. When it comes to what I consider my personal work though, that level of detail is antithetical to my goals. When reviewing a photograph I took several months ago, I’m not noticing the lack of individuality in the distant leaves or the undefined edges of objects further towards the borders of the frame where the film chemicals were less dense. I’m seeing my present memory of that place, of that point in experience, projected onto the print in front of me.

The last, and most important, reason why I shoot film is because it is physical evidence of my experience at a particular point in the past. When shooting with my digital cameras, the “image” itself is intangible, a string of ones and zeroes stored on the memory card. Is the image on the card the same image that was captured by the sensor? When I move that image to my computer, is it still the same picture? I’m not a philosopher, but I struggle with reconciling the essence of my digital photographs with their actual form. This is not the case for film. This event happened and here is the direct result of that captured in physical medium. This thought, and the idea for this post, came to me while organizing my oldest negatives. Much of the film was many years old and contained images of lost family pets, landscapes that are long gone, and situations that will never again exist. But they did exist, I was there, and in my hands I can hold the incorruptible proof of that. While digital is abstract, film is concrete. Light interacted with my friend as we were playing guitar in a parent’s backyard in early high school, reflecting into my camera and etching that moment onto my film. Light interacted with that dusty dirt road on the way to a campground, seen from the bed of my scoutmaster’s truck as I sat on top of tents and backpacking bags, and then interacted with my film. This film is only one step removed from the moment itself, and is the most tangible reminder possible that these events occurred. Maybe this is related to nostalgia, but I believe it is much deeper. While film can elicit memory and its associated mentality, that is inseparable from the physical nature of what film is.

For me, photography is about more than just the resulting picture. It is a process, from loading my camera to recognizing and capturing special moments in time. It is about using my camera as a tool instead of a distraction. About what I felt and saw at the time instead of creating a perfect replica. Beyond that, my photography is about creating a tangible link to my subject. Something I can touch and feel, something I can look at and say, “This happened.” To me, photography is about winding my film forward after a shot, knowing that the previous moment is lost to time but that in my hands I’ve given permanence to my perspective at that discrete instance. That is why when I leave the house I grab my old Pentax instead of the A7iii collecting dust next to it on the shelf.