Shooting it mindfully

Shooting with expired film — Somewhere in Northern Greece shooting with a long expired film

I love photography. I loved it very early in my life. It was a very typical thing seeing my dad with a camera taking photos. Of my brother, my mom and me, of our house, the furniture, the car, the canary bird, you name it. So many photos! When we traveled there were even more. So I got used to this as a very ordinary thing to do and I loved every step of the procedure. I remember being so happy when we went to the photo lab to develop the films because I knew that in a few days I would hold the printed photographs and the negatives. The negatives always fascinated me more! It was pure magic that this dark plastic strip was turning into images on paper!

Then many of the printed photographs would make it into an album and the rest would go in boxes (usually shoe boxes) along with the negatives. The boxes remained stacked in closets and drawers, pretty much like the digital photos we now keep in our phones. We would forget they were there. But when you have photos printed on paper, you don’t want to throw them away. It’s like they have their own life, they are three dimensional objects that you can hold.

When I was a teenager I got a digital camera and the film camera seemed obsolete. A few years later I got a smartphone and the digital camera seemed obsolete. The phone was smaller and always with me. Of course, I had to delete some photos every once in a while or transfer them to my laptop, because the space was limited back then.

Lake Geneva from Chillon Castle, a few years ago on my first attempts with film.

In our cloud times, I can have endless photos right in my hand. Photos that I don’t even remember I have and never look at. But it doesn’t matter, there is much storage space. Let them be there. “I might use them in the future”, I was always telling myself until I decided to do some real good photo decluttering. Thankfuly, you can track places and dates! So many photos of food and restaurants, and sunsets, and dawns, and dogs, and buildings… I could have a dozen pics of the same subject, with the slightest differences. And kept them all just to “choose the best of them” if I wanted to post one on instagram.

I deleted many of them (not all, I still have so much clutter) and I decided to be more mindful when I take photos with my phone. I try to limit the clicks and, as a consequence, the time I spend with the phone at hand.

With film photographs the story is totally different. When I’m taking photos with my film camera, I take my time. When you have max 36 attempts at your disposal with each film, you have to be more mindful, it’s not exactly a choice. So I have to see what I want to shoot, decide how to frame it, stay still and click. Because every click costs and you can’t undo. So either I want it or not, I absorb the surrounding. I pay attention, I analyze it. I am in the moment. The choice of “the best of them” that I do with digital photos must be done in advance with the film camera. Before taking the photo.

Of course I have lots of failures! Many blurry photos, dark photos, wrong frame, wrong settings. It’s a trial and error process, as most things, and you have to be patient and persistent. I try to get better film by film and enjoy it, because that’s my initial purpose anyway, and to not get disappointed when much of the film turns out to be just ruined photos. The sure thing is that I have a huge admiration for the professionals who shoot with film and have such amazing photos, and even more for the photographers in the years before the digital cameras, that had to cover a rock concert or a football match and go back to the magazine or the newspaper with a bunch of great photos to give for printing.

So these here are a few on 35mm with a Nikon F70. Some ok, some failures but all shot with enjoyment. And this fascination every time I get the negatives at my hands is still on.