Answer...."Creative fulfilment"

Sure, shooting film in this day and age makes no sense. It makes next to no sense from a business perspective, or even from a hobby perspective. Nobody cares that any of us use film, or that I do anyway. In fact, it puts a lot of people off.

Nobody can really tell the difference these days between a digital photograph or a film photograph, either. Hell, I can't even tell the difference very often. So why the hell do I use it? And more to the point, why do I pay all the money to do so!?

It's a good question, and the best way I can describe it is for my own "creative fulfilment". I just enjoy the process of photography and creativity, that way. To explain what I mean by "creative fulfilment" allow me to use the analogy of owning and using an old car.

When you own, and maintain, and keep running, an old car, there is a satisfaction you get that owning and driving a modern car does not deliver. When you're cruising along the motorway in a 40 year old car, and it ticks along just right, and it gets you to the end of a 300 mile journey without missing a beat, and you get that special smell of an older engine, you're alive to the fact that the reason it does all of those things is because of what YOU HAVE done with it, and the care and attention you've applied to it.

Changing the oil every few months instead of once a year, setting the spark plugs to the precise measure, keeping the carburettors maintained, greasing the steering column, changing the coolant twice a year, replacing radiator hoses even when they don't look like they need it, and so on. These are all things that people who drive modern cars do not have to do, or even think about. Their garage just does it all once a year (or some of it), and some of it even they don't have to do. Many people have no desire to do these things themselves, these days. And why would you?

A modern car, and my old car, both get us from A to B (just as a digital and film camera both get us an image). A modern car does most things for us without us even having to think about it (digital camera). They even tell you when the oil is getting low. You don't have to check it with a dip stick, anymore. You service it once a year, and it does its job. Simple. But boring. Uneventful.

The way these two cars get us to our destination, differs, and the journey of car ownership between these two kinds of car also differs. And the steps we need to take to ensure the older car gets us to our destination, differs; more so than with a modern car.

When I shoot a scene, or a person, or a group, with film, I think and consider things that other people do not have to. I think about the contrast of the light, and how the film I have loaded will react to that light range. I then think about where to measure the light for the exposure of that film. I think about how I can, or if I should, change development times to account for the light I had on the day. I can decide whether to increase or decrease contrast by things like the temperature of my chemicals, or by how often I agitate the film in the developer. I get the smell of an exposed roll in my nose, and I get the smell of chemicals that I use to create my art. It's a physical process that digital does not offer.

I get the excitement of knowing every decision I make, and every action I take, precisely and exactly impacts on the images I get out of it, and will either make them, or destroy them. And no human being ever, anywhere in the world, now or forever, will ever be able to create that exact image again, and the only thing that ensures the image is recorded at all...is me. And in that context, every photograph I take is truly unique, and truly one of a kind, because its created by a chemical reaction to light and developers that I have measured; a reaction of which has taken place to precisely my variables, and my choices. My work lives or dies by those choices, as does my reputation. And THAT is the joy of creative fulfilment. It's an edgier existence that makes me nervous, and that scares the shit out of me every shoot.

And THAT is why I shoot film, because it furnishes me with a thrilling yet terrifying experience during an otherwise distinctly regular activity, and fairly regular life. It makes fucking no sense to do it that way, anymore. I know that. I am not stupid. But that is also why I do it. It is me. It's my madness. My lunacy. My curse. In my mind, it makes me a little weird; a little different from the normal, and that is a little interesting.

It is what makes me, me. It's what makes my work, mine. It's what makes my work, unique, to me. And without it, I am just bored.

So, now you know.