On working slowly

I am often asked why I still choose to shoot personal projects on film when digital files are objectively cleaner, faster, and cheaper. It is a fair question. By any modern standard of efficiency, analog photography makes very little sense. But the honest answer is that the slowness is the entire point.

When you only have thirty-six frames on a roll, the physical limitation forces a shift in how you look at the world. It makes you say no to most of what you see. Instead of lifting the camera to every passing shadow, you find yourself standing still in front of a scene. You have to decide, long before the shutter clicks, if what you are looking at truly deserves to be preserved. That deliberate choice - made with your feet, your eyes, and your patience - is where the real photography begins.

By giving up the ability to see the image immediately, you also invite luck back into the process. Digital photography is about control and elimination; you shoot, check the screen, adjust, and shoot again until you have engineered the perfect frame. Film requires a kind of blind trust. Because you cannot see what you just caught, you have to let go of the need for perfection and leave a little room for chance. Sometimes the light leaks, or a hand moves, or the exposure isn’t quite what you planned, and the mistake turns out to be better than anything you could have intentionally designed.

Then there is the waiting. With digital, the gratification is instant, but so is the judgment. Film demands a period of forgetting. By the time the negatives are developed weeks or months later, the initial emotion of the moment has cleared away. You see the image for what it actually is, not just what you hoped it would be. The delay strips away the noise and leaves behind something more honest.

None of this is meant to be a rulebook for anyone else. Digital is a beautiful, boundless tool. But for me, film is the only pace that successfully forces me to slow down, welcome the unexpected, and actually pay attention.