Looking Back

That’s what we do at this time of year, isn't it? New Year just seems to invite introspection and reflection and so that’s what I’ve been doing, reflecting back to when this “new” film journey began. You might say the photo above started it all. This is a shot of a 150 year old fire hydrant located on the banks of Bayou St. John in New Orleans, taken back in 2010 shortly after buying a new 35mm SLR.

As I relayed in my earliest blog posts I lost all my film camera equipment in Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. If I am honest though, I had been slowly converting over to digital for a few years even before that. When I decided to “get back into” serious photography in 2007 I tried to do it all with digital and became very frustrated. This was probably as much my fault as that of the technology but I was frustrated none-the-less.

In 2010 I decided to buy another film camera. There wasn't much new 35mm equipment available at the time and I ended up with a $150 Promaster 35mm SLR which was a basic, all manual, 35mm SLR. It had a 50mm f1.8 K-mount lens and the picture of the ancient fire hydrant above was from the very first roll of Fugi 200 color film I shot with it. The pictures, including this one, were not that great. Let’s face it, by that time I had not shot an all manual 35mm camera in several years, the film stock was certainly not the greatest and although the processing was first rate, the scanning (by a local lab) left much to be desired.

What this new 35mm camera and this first roll of film did do for me, was remind me of how much fun flim is and how comfortable I was working with the kind of equipment I had used to make pictures for over 50 years.

So my New Year’s blog message for everyone out there is, whether you’re an old fart like me or a newbie discovering film for the very first time – forget all the technical stuff and either remember or discover for yourself that “film is fun!”