Film

 July 26, 2021

 

Greetings from a different focus,

 I stood in line behind my friend Dan, edging our way through airport security, barely listening to the TSA agent’s drone about shoes and belts and liquids. 

 “I have to have them deal with these separately,” he said, a little apologetically.  He held up a baggie of little plastic containers, which, at first, I couldn’t identify.  Then it registered, as if the image was sent from a different dimension via air mail post.

Rolls of film. 

 Photos are time machines.  For most of my life, looking at pictures was a way to step back into a different era for a minute and enjoy whatever took place there.  I have photo albums still, nested among books and other portals.  I love visiting these other times, in the words and in the photos I’ve saved.

 This along with a trove of digital pictures, stored on computers and thumb drives and of course, my phone.  The advent of digital photography, and the ubiquitous lens in the palm of our hand, has changed how we care about photographs, I think.

 Dan anticipated my question about the film, explaining how he got decided to try a camera someone was giving away, and found it satisfying.  The mechanics of operating it, figuring out how to focus, what light does to the image he wants to capture.  He laughed a little at the cost, and of course waiting for the film to be developed to see if the picture you thought you took was in fact what you got.

 There is a generation of people now taking pictures who will never understand the analog experience.  I’m not certain it matters, in the grand scheme, but the idea of losing this other way of capturing moments on film, these little prisms of another time, gave me pause.

 Loading a camera, spooling the film into place, lining up the teeth of the feed with little holes in the roll, paranoid about touching the celluloid or letting light get on it, which just added to the mystery of how it all worked.  And the focusing and adjusting and clicking and advancing.  It was a process, even as the point and shoot cameras were invented.  

 And then waiting a week for the images to be created, so you can see what you captured, and be transported back to that moment.  Opening that envelope from the photo processor, complete with the negatives so you could order more prints, and then sorting through the ‘bad’ pictures; the cropped off heads and overexposed shots, and this one of someone’s knee.

Of course, there was improvements in the process.  The cameras soon did most of the work, and the processing got to be ‘Next Day’.  You drove up to a little kiosk in the parking lot of a grocery store and dropped your roll of film off to some surly teenager, and magically there were photos in a paper envelope the following day.  Unless you wanted slides for your projector, that could take a little longer.  And then you could get ‘doubles’ so you could share the prints with your friends.

 And there was an era of Polaroid film, that was nearly instant.  Take a picture and the camera spat the print out as it developed in front of your eyes.  How many of us fanned the Polaroid square, waiting to see if we got ‘devil’s eyes’ again? 

 I only vaguely understand the chemistry and mechanics of taking analog pictures, just enough to leave the process in the realm of magic.  For nearly 200 years there has been this slow progression from daguerreotype, and huddling under a cloak, holding an explosive flash in one hand, to the Kodak disposable cameras, and nearly suddenly, digital.  That progress has made our miraculous time travel possible, and then easier, and now nearly thoughtlessly convenient.

 There is a semantic difference I’ve noticed when people talk about photography.  Some say, ‘I want to take your picture.’  Others ‘I want to make your picture.’  It’s a small thing, but it has held my attention.  ‘I want to make your picture’ sounds like the photographer is engaged with the process and the subject in a more intimate way.  I mention this because that’s what I think begins to dissolve when we leave the analog experience behind.

 Dan is a thoughtful, gentle person, with a generous sense of humor.  He loves fly fishing, another sort of romantic vestige of another era.  As he told me about his experiences with a film camera, I sensed the care he employed, the attention he gave.  In those moments it felt like the photos that Dan had captured on real film were more precious.  I have to say, I had forgotten the respect I had once held for making pictures.

 I like the convenience of digital photography, and the ease of having a camera in my hand whenever I want.  And I also see the value, the importance, of capturing important moments, purposefully, carefully.  Of making pictures, these slivers of life, saved for us to travel back to whenever we miss the people and the places we saw in those moments.

I realize the nostalgia laced in here, but this conversation with Dan made me think about the next photo I took with my phone.  I considered it differently, gave it just a little of the reverence a miracle deserves. 

  

Hope this finds you with correct exposure,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith