Analog Photography: A Beginner’s Guide

Photography on analog film has simply put received a recent renaissance. In our digital age, I guess a romantic veil surrounds the analog approach to photography. Even when shooting digital cameras, we do postprocessing to simulate the look of analog film. We talk about the specific and beloved look of certain films, and how their sensitivity and grain add a charm to the image. Delving deeper, a reason for the analog renaissance might be our growing desire to slow down; to immerse ourselves and sharpen our creative senses by restraining the means with which we photograph. Where the digital camera is soon so perfect that we as photographers can sometimes feel redundant, the analog camera requires our undivided presence. These cameras are subject to the same limitations as they were in the dawn of photography. You must visualize what you want to create beforehand, and you cannot rely on an lcd to feed you the result. Thus, in analog photography we are forced to slow down, plan, create the right circumstances, and capture the wanted picture at the decisive moment.