The art of photography has changed so much throughout the years. New technology allows for new forms of photography and creations, but also makes things easier for the photographer, and sometimes that is not the best thing.

I knew for a while that I wanted to get into photography, and influenced by most people surrounding me I thought the best way to do that was by having a nice digital camera, which is why I started going everywhere with my mother’s Nikon while I was on holiday back home in Spain.

When it was time to go back to the US and to college I couldn’t bring the camera with me, so I decided to dig out the one that we had at home and that nobody had used for years: our old Nikon FE 35mm film camera. Best idea I ever had.

I decided to start experimenting with it, without really knowing how it worked and slowly started becoming obsessed with photographing people and capturing moments in mine and my friends’ lives. I was no longer satisfied with taking average pictures, my subjects were great and I wanted to capture them as perfectly as possible, so I decided to learn everything there is to know about manual mode, then I knew I would be satisfied with every picture I took.

Film photography gives you a very limited amount of chances to capture a moment, and that is the beauty of it and why it’s the best way to learn and improve, it’s what got me motivated to try to be the best that I can be. Like my photography instructor said in our first class, digital photography is making people lazy, they no longer work on getting 20 good pictures but instead take 100 and delete the bad ones. That’s not what this art is about, and while I love digital cameras, I fully agree that there is nothing better than learning photography with a good film camera, with which you can’t be lazy, and believe me, getting your pictures developed after a few weeks without knowing what to expect is one of the most exciting things ever.

Try it out, experiment, and have fun. I sure know I am.