So I went for a hike through the mines at Goldfield Colorado yesterday, taking only my antique Canon A-1 film camera with me. I had a few exposures remaining on my roll of Ilford Hp5 ISO 400 monochrome film and was hoping to expend them on the old mines. I think I had about 12 pictures to take but by the time I had reached the turnaround point on the trail I still had 4 remaining.
The last part of the trail doesn’t really pass many highlights so I was wondering how I was going to use up four exposures. That quandary got me to thinking of my digital camera where four exposures would be nothing. Lol, there have been times when I accidentally pressed the shutter button and banged off eight frames of the ground, or my shoe, or the floor mat in Kevin’s car. It’s nothing on a bird photography outing in Eleven Mile to shoot 600 frames with 500 of them almost exactly alike.
So then I got to thinking how therapeutic it was to be just walking along looking for a real and distinct image with no real pressure to actually find one. I was just thoroughly enjoying the process of manual photography. I enjoyed loading the film by hand and cranking it into place. I enjoyed turning the lens to the aperture I wanted and setting the shutter speed dial to my desired value. I enjoy the satisfying slap of the mirror as the camera bangs it out of the way to expose the film.
And today I will enjoy going to the lab to turn in the film for developing and for the opportunity to browse the camera store looking for some little gizmo I might need. And I always enjoy chatting with the lab people about the whole process of shooting film, a skill nearly lost on today’s photographers.
I’m going to have a good day 🙂
Don’t forget to check out my new book, “Wildlife Photography in the Colorado Rockies” now out in print on both Amazon / Kindle and Lulu Publishing!
