My First Venture into Film Photography.

Fujifilm 200 / Konica TC-X

For years I had been curious about experimenting with Film Photography, but, as per usual, I was overthinking doing so because I was afraid to fail.

Curious. After 5 years dedicated to Professional Photography, mainly in the Digital Medium, for me to be afraid was a little bit silly. Even so, the new is both scary and fascinating. So one day in December of 2023, while my Nikon D5500 was far away from me, I decided to just plunge into it.

Of course, not without some help. My friend Zack (@1331photo on Instagram), hoped along for a street photo-shoot with me that day, and he taught me the ropes. It was a dull, rainy day. Yet I felt so giddy and excited to discover a new way of doing what I've always been doing.

Yikes...

I know right? All that accumulated experience and yet... It's a fresh start. Now, to be fair to myself, I only messed up 4 out of 36 exposures. And that's even accounting for the fact that I overturned the film after I was done shooting it, and it snapped out of the canister.

So when I took to the lab, they had to open the back of the camera in a darkroom and get the film out that way, to avoid overexposing all of it.

It was a good mistake to make because now I'm hyper aware of my shots. So I won't let that happen again... Hopefully.

Okay now, let's move on to the rest of the roll.

Now these,

Are a selection of my favorites. The rest I will share at the end of this entry. But, before that, I want you to enjoy my selection of the roll and the qualities they all share.

Yes, there's a lot of noise and grain. But in my opinion, that's what adds more nuance and character to each one of them. There's another level to the graphical aspect of these images, and makes them more compelling.

And up next, my favorite shot of the entire roll, because I couldn't even plan something like this if I wanted to.

The one light leak.

Honestly, I am simply baffled. The one photo, of the entire roll, with the most prominent Light Leak, and it's in this one. Again, no planning whatsoever. The photo was taken inside the Salt Lake City Public Library, and there were no prominent lights at all.

Just a dull and gray sky crashing from the top.

Zack @1331photos on Instagram

Again, incredibly thankful to this dude who not only gave me the roll of Fujifilm for free, but also thought me so much on how to shoot film. Looking forward to hang out together more.

Now to wrap this up, here are the rest of the photos and a reminder to everyone: Push against your fears. You will make mistakes, and so you will learn. And each time you do it, you will get better.

Go do it.