I just bought myself a DVD player and got all my old DVDs down from the loft. I’ll tell you why, and it’s a theme in my life and mind at the moment.
I wanted to watch Toy Story 3 the other day. It’s a classic and one of the only movies that’s ever almost made me actually cry tears.
I own Toy Story 3 along with an obscene amount of other movies in my Apple TV library.
I pressed play and it played in pixelated 720p. Maybe not even 720p. It was like watching it on a Sega Game Gear with TV adapter. Those were the days, but that’s not the point.
I tried everything the internet said, to get Toy Story 3 to play in HD. Nothing worked, so I contacted Apple. After some convoluted reason about it being bought a long time ago and as part of a Toy Story 1-3 bundle, the upshot was if I want to watch it in HD, I’ll probably have to buy it again for £14!
So I don’t own Toy Story 3. One google search later (yeah, old school), and a short trip to Argos and I’m the proud owner of a £30 multi-region DVD player!
I plugged it in, and turned it on, and put a DVD in and watched a movie I own.
No connect to wifi, no subscriptions to anything needed, no cloud or firmware updates.
It is a thing of beauty, in a way.
If you read my last issue or follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that film is now my personality. I can’t tell you how obsessed I am with it all. What do you mean you already know?! Rude.
Last night I shot some stuff for a local wedding venue, and 90% on film because I wanted to. Then today I spent what feels like the whole day developing and scanning it.
As one of my good (sometimes annoying) friends often says “it just seems a very long winded way to end up with a digital photo”.
And that’s the point.
I’m taking the long way, by choice.
In a world of fast tracks and shortcuts and AI this and that, you still have the choice to go a different direction.
I took some digital photos last night too, and they’re nice obviously, but the film contains all that effort and I think effort of any kind is always kind of palpable.
The client gets a photo. And it’s too easy to think that our goal should be to minimise our effort to get that photo to them. To whack it in some software and beep boop bop out pops a photo the same or very similar or, annoyingly, sometimes better than we have created in the past before all this stuff existed to do our jobs for us.
But it’s not the same. Because effort is palpable.
I’ve just delivered last night’s shoot – 129 film photos and 87 digital. I used one digital camera with one lens, and I used three film cameras with a bunch of different lenses and some film stocks I’d actively chosen earlier in the day – three 35mm rolls and two medium format. Today I sat on the floor and with my hands in the dark bag, struggled to get the medium format rolls onto their spools first time, spilt some bleach on my t-shirt and swore at various inanimate objects. I hurt my wrist a bit when I was doing one of the wash steps on the second batch of film I developed… I scratched my head at why the colour of two frames taken seconds apart came out a slightly different colour. And I loved every single conscious slow decision on my long winded way to end up with a digital photo.
When I told the venue staff last night I was going to shoot mainly film, frankly they were non-plussed and not particularly interested.
One of them just replied to me after seeing the gallery saying “They’re all beautiful but LOVE the film ones, so cooool!!”
I think that’s because effort (and passion obviously) is palpable.
Of course film is amazing, magical and miraculous too. But part of that magic is the effort that has to go into making a photo.
I don’t think, as creative people, we should ever underestimate or undervalue the effort that goes into making something we’re proud of, regardless of whether there’s a quicker or easier way.
Just like there’s something really comforting about sitting down to watch a DVD, consciously chosen, compared to firing up netflix and choosing something just because it’s there.
And I just got Toy Story 3 off eBay on DVD for £1.92! Result, and nobody can ever downgrade the quality of that!
Thanks for reading!
Adam
PS – This is my favourite photo from last night – Mamiya RB67 Pro SD, Phoenix 120 film, taken, developed and scanned by me. A long winded way to end up with a digital photo for sure but I don’t think digital cameras can do this.
PPS – James, just kidding, you’re not really annoying 😉
