For one, Polaroid is just cool. I remember wanting to shoot one when I was a kid when seeing some friend of my brother with one, but I was simply too little to be trusted, I guess. I have never pulled the trigger (more true than I ever knew till just recently, they really do have a trigger kind of mechanism) on a Polaroid. And second, I only have ten shots. That is just exciting in itself.

I know there are other folks out there who can understand this strange feeling, but I am just giddy at the thought. It will be the perfect way to catch those ethereally normal moments as our family makes a very big life change. And you can bet I will be writing notes on the bottom. That is just too cool to not have to do that in some computer software!

Now, I am by no means the first to bring this topic up, I would not delude myself to believe so. I have read it on the Strobist, in history flicks about the greats of photography (notably Henri Cartier-Bresson), and as I just mentioned, from Doug Menuez…among many others. We must force ourselves to get that film-shooting edge, but how do we do that?

Well, you could shoot some film. Just a thought.

You know your aperture ring, you shutter speed dial, and your focus so well, you are setting up for the shot about to happen without looking at the camera. You do not need the display in your viewfinder to tell you, you know where your settings are. You do not need some computer to tell you how to expose the shot.

And after all that technical garbage, you realize the photo is about much more than the settings. It is that decisive moment. You are reading the situation, waiting for that moment, and when it happens, you take your shot. That one shot will be much better than dozens of machine gunned images. Know what you want and press that shutter when you want.

Now, I have to stay digital. It really is not an option. Well, if I want to see my images in less than half a year (literally), this is what I need to do. What I am struggling to fight against, though, is the subtle slide into digital laziness.

So, I challenge myself every once in a while. Shoot manual exposure every once in a while; it’s good for you. Manual focus, even. Wow, wild stuff, I know. Last night, on my outing for the midnight shoot (which I talked more about on Twitter @CooperStrange), I thought, “hey, what if I had to choose film before hand?” So, I chose my ISO ahead of time and decided they were going to be black and white. Even though that is quite arbitrary in the digital world, it would be a basic decision if I had to choose which film to load into the camera.

I pre-visualized the shots in black and white, which I might add, was not all that hard since it was so dark and it was in a factory that produces a white powder. The scene was almost black and white in real life! I did not want to shoot a high ISO just to “give it that cool, old, film grain look”, because the folks in the old days did not shoot ISO just because of the cool grain. They wanted crisp photos, but needed the high ISO film for some shoots. So, I went with 400.

And to top if all off, I have not looked at one of those shots yet. It is kind of like waiting for the lab. Doug Menuez mentioned this wait. It is good for us. It helps break the chimping addiction (constantly viewing your LCD to check out your shots). It is also good for us at a much deeper level, developing patience. I think you could even argue it helps encourage our brains to be more visual and think ahead, to pre-visualize, but that is just a thought.

Don’t be digi-lazy. Be film sharp.

There are folks who still use daguerrotypes today. Chuck Close is one hitting the photo world headlines lately with his groovy daguerrotype of Brad Pitt. As he says, in explanation to why he uses a 150 year old photographic method, photography never got better than it was at the beginning. Daguerrotypes are actually extremely high quality, higher than we can attain in paper or digital methods today (they are polished metal…silver coated copper, if I remember correctly).

So, with that wordy context, here is what it was like to sit for a daguerrotype photo.

From Emerson’s journal on 24 October 1841:

. . . Were you ever Daguerrotyped, O immortal man? And did you look with all vigor at the lens of the camera or rather by the direction of the operator at the brass peg a little below it to give the picture the full benefit of your expanded & flashing eye? and in your zeal not to blur the image, did you keep every finger in its place with such energy that your hands became clenched as for fight or despair, & in your resolution to keep your face still, did you feel every muscle becoming every moment more rigid: the brows contracted into a Tartarean frown, and the eyes fixed as they are fixed in a fit, in madness, or in death; and when at last you are relieved of your dismal duties, did you find the curtain drawn perfectly, and the coat perfectly, & the hands true, clenched for combat, and the shape of the face & head? but unhappily the total expression escaped from the face and you held the portrait of a mask instead of a man. Could you not by grasping it very tight hold the stream of a river or of a small brook & prevent it from flowing?

Copyright 1996, The Daguerreian Society