Time Travel with Film Photography
Lessons that can’t be learned when shooting digital
I felt like such a fool when I collected my bag from the belt at TSA, realizing I had completely forgotten to remove my unexposed rolls of film for hand inspection. It was my first adventure since I began dabbling with film, and I was unused to taking precautions like this.
I wanted to document the small moments of a breathless two months of travel photography work, and had just exposed all of my film to harmful x-rays, and wouldn’t know the impact of this until the film was shot and developed. My mind soon became consumed by the stresses of projects and logistics, and I forgot completely about my slip-up at the airport.
Work assignments took me to the Adriatic coastline of Italy and Slovenia; the forests, riverlands, and wine country in Southern Hungary, and finally to Prishtina, Kosovo, where I developed this first roll. When I got the images back, I was furious. The images were grainier than anything I had ever seen, and the highlights were blown out beyond any hope of salvation.
My first emotion was anger at whoever had ruined my film in the development process (because naturally, it’s always someone else’s fault at first, right?). But then I remembered a month back to that moment of frustration at the airport and realized that this was my doing. I was so annoyed at having “wasted” this roll of film, the money spent on developing it, and most of all, the hours of walks I had taken with it, waiting to capture the best moments.
But later that night, I took another look at the scans, in search of any redeeming fragments, and I started to look at them in a different light. Something was striking and timeless about these images: almost as if they were taken in another era, or world altogether.
I realized that the X-rays didn’t ruin the film, but simply added another variable to the production process; effectively sending them through a time machine and altering the images in the most unpredictable of ways. I learned then that photography isn’t about perfection, it’s about capturing the essence of a moment, and that it is perhaps the imperfections of that moment that have the power to make it relatable or true to the observer.
Contrary to becoming more frustrated and averse to shooting film, this event brought me to love the medium of film even more. This lesson opened up a new world of opportunities to explore: Now that I’ve shot ‘damaged’ film, why not try shooting expired film, shooting on a vintage camera that its owners haven’t shot or used in decades, or some combination of the above?
Circumstances like this are another testament to the level of authenticity that film photography has: The opportunity that exists in these portals in which the creator can impart something human into a process that today is almost overwhelmingly handled by a computer: a sterile shortcut that doesn’t allow us these backdoor entrances into the process of creation.
With film, you have more opportunities to leave a part of yourself behind in the image. And this is why I’m so excited to keep growing in this discipline. It’s a big reason why I want to throw my digital cameras out the window, and travel only with my notebook and an analog camera; my bag chock full of film.
(The rest of the rolls of film I carried were not noticeably affected by the TSA scanners, because they were at ISO levels of 200 or below, thus less sensitive to the x-rays).
You can follow along with my travel photography on Instagram at @mattnelly.jpg and at www.mearcstapa.com
I would love it if you sent me a message about your photo journeys, and perhaps what lessons you have learned along the way.
Thank you for reading,
Matthew -Darjeeling, India | February 24
