Film Photography, Slows you Down
“Film slows you down,” says one voice, “as a river slows to mirror the moon. It invites you to stand still long enough for the moment to find you before you set it free.”
“And yet,” another voice answers, “is it slowness you seek, or the warm cloak of memory, woven in silver and salt? Is it the truth of now — or the comfort of then — that you cradle in your hands?”
I load a roll of Ilford HP5 as a monk might arrange incense — each motion deliberate, each sound part of a prayer. The first voice whispers, like wind through pine: “The present moment is the only moment available to us.” And when the shutter sighs, I am here — wholly, humbly.
But the other voice smiles like a trickster in a marketplace: “Or perhaps you keep this ritual because you fear the infinite corridors of choice, the endless undo of a world where nothing need be final.”
From the shadows, Henri Cartier-Bresson murmurs: “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” And I understand — patience is not an indulgence, but a discipline. Film offers no shimmering screen to soothe a restless heart. You must trust the unseen, as Ansel Adams trusted the slow alchemy of the darkroom, as a seed trusts the deep silence of soil.
So is film photography mindfulness, or a beautiful illusion we choose to believe? Perhaps it is both. For in the grain and the waiting, in the light leaks and the missed frames, something sacred happens: we do not simply capture the present — we dissolve into it, until there is no lens, no photographer, no moment — only the stillness itself, breathing.
