Shooting on Film

This assignment was another departure for me from what I'm used to. However, I consider it a very good thing that continually this class is pushing me to think of things in more abstract ways. Before this assignment, I really had no interest in touching a film camera, it was antiquated technology to me, more of a novelty than anything. While I'm not a total convert, this was a lot of fun (technical difficulties aside). There is something different than working with celluloid against pixels on a computer screen. Somehow it's a more organic experience. 

I was really hesitant to even touch the camera to begin with. I somehow viewed it as being fragile, and my uninformed oafishness would be its undoing. While we did have some very unfortunate technical difficulties, I was still pleasantly surprised with how this photos actually turned out. There is a depth and dimension to this that I feel can't quite be matched by digital. I can almost feel the textures reflected in some of these shots. 

I have no real revelations after doing this assignment, no huge conversions to a new way of thinking, but rather a quiet understanding that there is something very special and different about shooting on film. I've never really tried to tell a story with photos in this sort of way, but there is something organic and fresh to this dying art, unmatched in the sometimes staleness of digital. Maybe digital is too perfect, too much of a good thing. Maybe that's the point. Life isn't perfect, and if we didn't have imperfections to balance out the good things in life, we might also find that stale.