Film is a Hobby. Film is Art.

Okay, film will never replace digital! Nor would I want it to. Digital photography is just so convenient and dare I say it, perfect for so many applications. 

I frequently have the need to document fabrication details, construction progress, or even damage with pictures as a part of my work in shipbuilding. I would never choose a film camera to do this although for many years I did it with film because that was all there was at the time. Now I keep a digital camera handy.

Family pictures at the grand kids’ birthday parties, ball games, graduations etc. – all done on digital. When asked to shoot portraits for the church directory I chose my digital camera. Why? Well, let’s see; the ability to see immediately whether you got the shot you wanted (with no blinking eyes or weird half smiles); no need for expensive film processing, and if you shoot in RAW and have any kind of decent software for post processing you can do all kinds of things with you digital file.

So where does that leave us with film and why are there so many people shooting film? After several years of shrinking film sales in the face of the digital revolution, Kodak is out of bankruptcy and most companies that remain in the film market report stable or increasing sales. These days film is a steadily growing market, especially black and white. 

There are a few professional photographers still using film but most film shooters today describe themselves as either hobbyists or artists. So as the digital dust settles it appears that what we have left in the world of film is a steadily growing number of amateur photographers and artists that appreciate the nuances of film and exploit it for their own artistic purposes and satisfaction.

Long obsolete, so called alternative film processes, such as cyanotypes, daguerrotypes and photogravure, as well as lith printing are also making a comeback. The film look has always been valued and appreciated in fact, it can be argues that most digital picture post processing efforts are attempts to imitate some aspect of film photography.

Since my own photographic interests do not include the mysteries and art of darkroom my own incursion into the hobby or art of film has turned instead towards the shooting part of the process and I have become enamored of pinhole photography recently. The photograph above was taken with a homemade cardboard pinhole camera shooting 35mm Kodak Ektar 100 for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day 2012.

I have also started shooting a variety of specialty films available from The Film Photography Project (FPP) online store. This includes red scale, black & white movie film, and high speed traffic camera film. The FPP online store has become a film boutique offering more film stock s than were ever available when film was “king.” Each of these unique film stocks has its own “special effect” that digital folks would no doubt, love to emulate.

Ultimately I would like to combine the two and end up shooting some of these special film stocks in my pinhole cameras once I have mastered each separately to the point where I can predict and achieve the desired results.