First, some background.

Back in March 2020, when the world was about to end and everyone along with their newly adpoted cats decided that baking bread was the only sensible resolution, I purchased a 35mm SLR film camera; the sleek Nikon F3 born – like me – in ‘93, and – unlike me – built like an absolute tank.

At the time I was living in New York. There was no grand plan for my new mechanical homeboy, but I felt documenting the Brave New World we’d reluctantly smashed into face (-mask) first might be a reasonable way to ensure I wouldn’t die of lockdown induced boredom.

Fortunately, my newfound hobby wasn’t as fleeting as I might have feared. My tactile chunk of metal escorted me on tens of trips across the US and Europe, and was as much a steampunk extension of my right hand as was my lucky blue baseball cap to my head.

I enjoy film photography because, well, I’m a ridiculous human that likes making things hard for myself:

  • There’s zero real-time feedback from the camera as to whether a picture will come out the way you hope. More often than is acceptable, pictures come out blurred, or over / under exposed, or with an accidental double exposure, or something similarly dumb. I wear my tiny violin necklace with bitter pride.
  • Taking a picture literally costs about 36p. And that’s just the raw film. That doesn’t account for the time spent developing and scanning the film, nor the cost of chemicals.

So why even do it? Why not just blitzscale a portfolio on my now retro iPhone 11 Pro? Simple. Because scarcity, lack of feedback, delayed gratification, and general stress of failure force you to be more intentional. Each picture matters. You’re forced to view the world in a different light. You mentally spotlight frames from within your line of sight. That mindset change is a fun spell to be under (I’ve since lost it).

But frankly, as much as I enjoy the process, it’s not a sustainable hobby. Taking and eventually seeing the pictures are where the dopamine hit happens. But then I’ve spent several of the past several days slowly digitising film reel after film reel after film reel. And even that’s after developing all the film using a makeshift darkroom (a zippable, blacked out jacket-like thing) and a Paterson tank. It can be therapeutic. Mostly it’s just tedious.

I’ve had my fun with analogue photography. I’ve ventured down the rabbit hole and emerged both a convert and cynic. I’ve been obsessive with my Nikon, and other times shunned it long enough for it to grow a pitiful skin of dust. I feel I’m once more entering a period of the latter. “It’s only farewell, not goodbye” and all that jazz.

Onto the show.

You’ll no-doubt notice I have an “artsy wankery” style to my photography. Part of that is that it’s shot on film, there are unavoidable artefacts like water marks and random imperfections due to the developing process. Part of it is that I chose monochromatic – i.e. Black and White – film from the outset. This was mostly a constraint imposed by practicality and frugality. I can develop B&W film at home relatively cheaply and easily without the need for expensive equipment. I also wasn’t keen on sending away my film to third parties for developing and scanning (see above: frugal). Finally, part of my style happens in post, where I exaggerate light and dark around the subject and attempt to introduce “drama” into what otherwise might be a drab scene.

But enough blathering and wittering.

See below for a few of the photos that didn’t come out too horribly. And to be clear, there were a lot of duds, an overwhelming majority à la Blair’s general election landslide in ‘97. I still have a few rolls to develop, so expect this gallery to increase at some point.

Note #1: best to click through; the Javascript gallery I used relentlessly crops the previews.

Note #2: Kindly be patient. The photos here are collectively some 169MB. In the future I’ll upload smaller, watermarked versions to ease the network burden.