In this day and age, everything is available to us with the touch of a button. When we want something, we want it now, and a two-minute screen freeze can seem like forever. We can now shoot photos on our camera and wirelessly transfer them to our phones within minutes. We no longer remember when we had to constantly remove the SD card and insert it into our computers, and transfer the files to get our photos. However, in this age of instant gratification, I decided to change things up a bit. Just last year, I had my first film camera experience when I bought twenty disposable film cameras from Samy’s Camera in L.A. Since then, I’ve been abandoning my digital camera and shooting purely on film. Somehow, I find the old school way of doing things deeply gratifying. It was like a breath of fresh air.

The look:

Shooting film in a digital age helps my photos stand out. Film pictures have a raw and spontaneous look no one can replicate with its grain, vibrant hues, and light leaks. Even if I can now add grains to my photos with iPhone photo editing apps or photoshop, I always end up graining my photos too much or too little, and the edit becomes obvious and fake.

The experience:

The limited frames of film rolls and the inconvenience of not being able to see my photos makes me think through each shot more. I’d like to put it this way: each is shot money. $0.34 per shot to be exact for a roll of Kodak portra 400. Taking 10 pictures of the same picture doesn’t make it better. So rather than shooting aimlessly, I make sure I’m getting my composition right. It makes me a better photographer. It allows me to slow down and take my time. Sometimes, I take several weeks or even a month to finish a roll.

The limits:

36 exposures per roll also narrows down my choices. Shooting with a digital camera, I take about 400-500 images per shoot and the quantity can be overwhelming. But with 6 rolls of film, I only end up with around 200 images.

The size:

It allows me to be sneaky with street photography. Its small size doesn’t scare off people on the streets that I’m trying to photograph. Not being able to playback the photos I took on a camera monitor,

The wait:

The anticipation of waiting to see how my photos turn out days or weeks after it was taken excites me. Of course, not all goes as expected and there are many disappointing moments. But it also makes me value my photos more over time since I’ve got so little.

I encourage you all to try film photography. You may start with a disposable film camera to get the hang of it. If you’re someone who’s not too fond of the grain aesthetics, I would still encourage you to try for the experience. Give yourself an escape from the impatient culture and practice resisting temptation for an immediate reward.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures that I took with my film camera: