When I first started taking pictures, I spent much of my time in the darkroom since anything digital was vastly beyond my affordability. I can't say I was ever very good at processing film or printing -because I wasn't- but I loved my time I spend alone in the dark, and that feeling that came with seeing the picture I'd hoped I'd taken, for the first time as the image bloomed over the paper.
But then I got my DSLR.
Now don't get me wrong, I love the thing. I love the instantaneous of it and the fact I don't have to spend a small fortune in chemicals, paper and film just to take a snapshot. It's allowed me to grow much faster as a photographer, because I didn't have to be so cautious or thoughtful about each picture I took. But I do feel I've lost some of my connection to the process, for the same reason.
Over time I've accumulated SO many film cameras, the kind that would have got me so excited had I had them when I was seventeen, and as much as I make grand plans to dust them off and go out experimenting, these cameras seem to have become more like ornamental relics to me now, up on a shelf to be admired almost as art in themselves rather than as the tools to create it.
It's an awful shame.
