Why I love shooting film: The tangible experience
Unpacking the film. Loading it into the camera. Winding to the first frame. Shoot ⟲ Wind. Spooling the roll back into the canister. Taking it out. Labelling it.
Transfering the roll into the developing tank. Preparing the developer solution. Developing. Stop bath. Fixing. Opening the tank. Washing. Final rinse. Taking it out. Holding the whole strip against the light, checking the results. Hanging it to dry.
Cutting the roll up into individual strips. Inserting them into the negative sleeves. Labelling those.
This workflow with all it’s little steps and rituals, is what I enjoy about film. Not always, and not all parts equally, but most of them most times. It’s nice to be working with my hands, creating a unique, tangible object.
For the most part, this object will still be turned into digital files; and edited, processed, published and printed from there. But for me, it’s still very worthwhile going through these manual steps first. Plus, it gives me the option for making a print in the darkroom. Which is a topic for another post in this series.
