ABOUT

Our family always had a camera nearby when I was growing up. Nothing fancy or serious... a Kodak Ektralite was in my mom's purse at all times; and later I'd carry my own 35mm point-and-shoot or instant camera. I took a lot of photographs but I never really knew too much about photography. But film was it, of course, all the way up through my late twenties. A simple camera was an always present companion in life. I bought a digital SLR in the early 2000s, which helped me learn more about photography. For the better part of a decade, I shot only digital and learned a lot, yet I couldn’t help but feel the overall experience was missing something. So I eventually decided to pick up an old film camera, abandon the instant feedback, and see how much I’d really learned. I wasn’t really sure I’d have any success. In fact, my first roll failed to attach to the spool and so twenty four sure-to-be awesome photographs were not actually captured on film. Hard lesson number one. I’d eventually get that first roll figured out. Since then, various old cameras loaded with different types of film have always been close at hand. The photos are still far from perfect and lessons continue to be learned. But it seems like there’s always at least one photo in each roll that has that little something special.