Digital photography didn't exist when my interest in taking pictures begun. I was 16 when my parents got me a second-hand Zenit 11, and in order to get my head around it, I enrolled in a photography workshop where l learned the basics of an SLR, as well as how to develop negatives and prints. My first digital camera was a Nikon D40 which I got on sale in 2009, and I've been shooting digital ever since. I love digital, I enjoy its flexibility, the control it gives over your files and the retouching process, as well as the speed.
Having said that, I've been missing shooting analog for some time. I feel like I second-guessed myself less when I shot film and was more confident in my abilities. Admittedly, I was a teenager then and that might've simply been the arrogance/ignorance of youth, but I felt drawn back to the days of shooting analog nevertheless. You can get really snap-happy with digital just because you can, rather than because you need each frame, so I wanted to remind myself of the discipline of shooting film where each shutter pressing matters, and where you don’t have the digital LCD screen on the back of your camera to double check the exposure. And so a couple of years ago I got a Canon AE-1 (with a 50mm f1.8 lens) on eBay and started shooting analog again. Not for commissioned stuff, cause that would be commercial suicide, but for personal projects, behind-the-scenes shots, friends and such. I've tried different films and fell back in love with Kodak (duh!) which is incidentally what I used to shoot all my black & white stuff on back in the 90s.
I don’t develop my own film or prints these days as I don’t have the time and, to be perfectly honest, don’t think I’d have the patience anymore. I’ve been using DS Colour Labs for that and they’ve been great. All in all, it’s been an educational and interesting return to basics for me, if frustrating at times. I’ve realised I shoot differently on analog, I even tend to frame images in a different way than on digital. Conversely, I’m not as trigger-happy when working with a digital camera now. I’ve actually got a couple of bigger 100% analog projects lined up at the moment, and I’m dying to get a Rolleiflex and try shooting medium format, but for the time being here are a few images taken on film over the past couple of years:
