I Love and Miss Film Photography

Photography is a hobby that is addictive. There is real magic in the click of the shutter, and I particularly love (and miss) film photography.

But it is a beautiful hobby, and one that will make you happy and will make your life better as long as you live.

With photography, you can create an historical reference point of your entire life stream. You can photograph people and places, things and expressions. All of these will help you recall in an instant beautiful or sad or painful memories that will recreate meaning for you.

That's why I got info photography. I was traveling as part of my job, and I saw some awesome places. I particularly love the desert, and especially the semi-arid environment around El Paso, TX.

El Paso Texas is a very unique environment, and I cannot recommend strongly enough how much pleasure it is to live there. The weather is good year-round, and the scenery is inspiring. There are the Franklin mountains to climb, and all that desert around them to hike in and camp in. Plus, New Mexico is right there, too.

Cool forests, mountain streams and mountain peaks to climb. It is truly awesome.

Plus, there is a lot of natural lithium in the El Paso water, which must be what makes El Paso the safest city per capita to live in, in America.

The Mechanical Olympus

I got into photography by accident, actually. I went into a pawn shop to see what might be available dirt cheap, and found a mechanical Olympus SLR for sale for maybe $100. I don't remember what I paid for it, but I bought it and started taking photographs, and pretty soon I was buying larger lenses, lense filters, tripods and other things to feed my hobby.

I took some amazing photographs with that old mechanical camera. In fact, I took the best photographs of my life. From the high desert to the shimmering Texas Gulf Coast, I took photographs if rocks, plants, birds, rock formations, caves, yachts, children, women, bull fights, cars, sunsets, food, and more.

I miss that Olympus mechanical camera. I miss the metallic "clackic" of the shutter curtain. I miss the depth of field. I miss the UV lenses, and I miss the awesome photographs I took with it.

I have some digital cameras. A Fuji, and a Panasonic with a Zeiss lense. I bought a Nikon digital SLR but the images were not distinguishable from the little pocket Fuji digital we carry, so the Nikon went back to Best Buy.

We also have video cameras, but we rarely use those.

My daughter, Annie, has the old Olympus camera now. She took it with her when she went to Chicago with her new husband, Taylor. I hope she takes some great photos with it, but I doubt she will because of the cost of film and the development of film.

Digital makes so much economic sense that using a film camera hardly makes sense any more. No, I take that back. Using film makes no sense at all. No sense.

But that mechanical shutter is gone forever now. And so is that special sense of anticipation of reviewing your images at the drugstore after they were dropped off for developing. The old photographers will remember the nagging little nibble in the back of your mind "Did I get that shot?"

And gone too are the surprise successes. Those shots you took that turned out great, or that you forgot even snapping and which were poster-worthy.

That's why I love photography, or why I loved it. I don't care for it so much any more, although great photography is still a terrific art. Great images are caught digitally every day, but I can take so many images now, and for free, that photos are almost a commodity. I miss the rarity, and the anticipation, and the disappointment.