Analog Dreams

The future is now… and it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. Or that’s just me turning into an old codger (most probably). This is so thick with irony: Digital made things better, easier, faster… But did it take away everything that was satisfying, tactile and earned about the practicality of Analog?

So here I am some 17 years since I’ve shot a roll of 35mm film, loading said film into a 70 year old camera I bought online

Why? Because I don’t get to see what turns out after I click the shutter. That I have to actually think: Line up the shot, think about the exposure triangle (aperture, shutter, film speed) and hope it’s correct. Yes instant gratification can take a hike (until I get the pictures back and they’re all buggered)

The camera is a GRAFLEX GRAPHIC 35. Guys like Weegee and Stanley Kubrick where Graflex users. It’s an all mechanical camera which means after that Matrix like EMP explodes in the upper atmosphere I’d still be able to take pictures of the dog

It weighs like an anvil and all the knobs and switches feel like it’s a wind up clock instead of a camera. But decades after it was built, it still works. Still fulfilling the very thing it was designed to do. Yes it’s obsolete. But not out of style.