Starting in high school, I had a real romance with photography. I bought an inexpensive single lens reflex Exa, kid brother to the Exacta, and to save money, I took up b&w photography, and built a darkroom under the basement stairs mostly with cardboard boxes. A friend and I did street photography in downtown Chicago, and we'd also got into film and did a sound film demo comedy for a local camera store. I bought a movie camera and did some animation. I used photography in a summer internship at a newspaper, including darkroom work and later in a job with a biomedical research agency. I engaged with using light, composition, and timing to get key moments on film. I savored taking photos on trips, though I tried to balance things so photos weren't the core of my trips. But this was all celluloid photography. As soon as digital became the coin of the realm, the camera did so much for me, I felt control and expression were lost. I'm sure I could get some of that control back, in this "new" format, but I missed the feel and smell of celluloid, the sound of the shutter, and the intimacy of the view finder. I persisted for a while with an inexpensive digital camera, but somehow the magic was gone. I miss it. I may get back to digital and try to make a place for myself with it, but so far, it hasn't been the same.
