Analog summer
Three rolls of film, no deleting, and the discipline of thirty-six chances.
This summer I put the digital body in a drawer and carried my father's old rangefinder and three rolls of film. One hundred and eight exposures for eight weeks. The arithmetic changes everything: at two frames a day you stop collecting pictures and start spending them.
The first roll taught me how much I had been leaning on the delete button — not as a tool but as a licence not to look before shooting. The second roll taught me patience with my own seeing: half of it was shot in the same courtyard, at the same hour, because the light there earned it. The third roll I barely remember shooting, which I've decided is what fluency feels like.
The scans came back in September like letters from a slightly better photographer. Not technically better — there are missed focuses here that a phone would never permit — but better at choosing. Thirty-six chances make you a critic before the shutter instead of after.
Studies shown are procedural placeholders in this post's shade until the scans are prepared for the web.