HAPPY ACCIDENTS OF ANALOG PHOTOGRAPHY
A couple months ago I had made some exposures while camping in the Anza-Borrego desert with my Zero Image multi-format 6×9 pinhole camera. I didn’t finish the roll of 120 black and white film on the trip, but on a recent trip I finished the roll and had it processed. When I looked at the negatives for the first time, the image above caught my eye right away. At first I didn’t know what I was looking at or how the image was made. But after looking at if for a while, I realized that it was an accidental double exposure. I knew immediately it was one of those one in a million shots, that even if your tried you couldn’t go back and do it again. The idea of “happy accidents” came to mind and that’s what compelled me to write this blog post.
Even though my life seems to be surrounded by digital imaging technology, I still find time to go back to my roots in analog film photography. As many of you may already know I have a passion for creating my own pinhole cameras and I enjoy the art of lensless photography very much. I have tried digital pinhole photography and find it to be less satisfying as pinhole images created with film or photo paper. During the course of the year I take hundreds of color and black and white film photographs. Some created with vintage cameras, some with toy cameras and some with pinhole cameras. Each camera leaves a unique footprint on each and every roll of film I put into it. Sometimes I’ll load a camera and it will be months before I finally get to finishing and processing the film. The anticipation and excitement of seeing what you “got” must be like a fisherman pulling in his net to see what he/she has caught.
Analog photography is different than digital photography in that it includes the photographer in every step of the creative process. From buying the film, to loading the film, to exposing the film, to processing the film, to printing the film in a darkroom to create the final image. Each step in this creative process makes room for what I call “happy accidents”. You may load the film incorrectly, your camera may have a light leak and expose part of your image, you may accidently double expose your film, you might get fingerprints on the negatives during processing… none of these things can happen during the creative process of creating a digital image.
Some people might say, “So what, I don’t want light leaking on my photos” or “who wants fingerprints on their negatives?” But what I miss the most while working in the digital photography world are the happy accidents that sometimes happen when you use film. With the cost of film and processing the way they are these days, I can see how a lot people are hanging up their film cameras and embracing the digital imaging world. Who doesn’t like the ability to be able to see if the photo you just took was what you had intended it to be? Who doesn’t like the idea of using the same memory card over and over to store your photos on? The advantages I fear outweigh the disadvantages. But with all these new digital advantages, we leave the human element of analog photography behind. I feel that humans are more like analog photography, we’re not perfect, so why should our pictures be that way?
Who knows what the future of analog photography will be, but I know I’ll be at it as long as companies still make film and paper.
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