Four years ago, in my last semester in university, I decided to take black and white film photography as a module. In part because of my last photo series, yearning, was entirely in black and white, and in part because I wanted a reason to engage photography on a deeper level.
I thought printing my digital photographs was satisfying, then I realised how satisfying developing my own roll of film photos was, and how satisfying printing those photos through light exposures and chemical washes was.
As I worked on the same photo series for months, my perspective grew and sharpened as I repeated the process of shooting, developing, printing, and comparing each print with each other to see if they fit together. At the end of the module, I had discovered a liking towards landscape photography as well as just cinematic photography in general.
With my first few paychecks, I decided to take a leaf out of the DigitalRev book and bought myself a Fujifilm X100F. The goal was to be able to shoot the landscapes easily whenever I travelled (and also because the X100 series has always been a dream camera of mine). And the X100F has indeed lived up to its name, because it's such a lightweight camera that still delivers on quality. For the past 2-3 years, I have been bringing it with me on every overseas trip.
The more I shoot, the more I enjoy taking these landscapes casually. Some shots I take on a snap, some shots I pause and frame with a lot more intention. This is not to say that I have grown out of portraiture, I still do enjoy them. But I think I'd placed a lot of pressure on myself when I used to do portraiture, and I was chasing after some sort of recognition that I had taken really good photos. Because of that, it often put me through creative slumps.
And as I was scrolling through some of my now-archived photos on Instagram today, I realised, boy do I take real good photos. But I realised that my favourite photos were those taken casually, especially on a disposable film camera. There was just something genuine about those photos that still speaks to me. Unfortunately, shooting and developing film has gotten way too expensive now. So maybe the only way to replicate that feel now is with my trusty X100F.
I don't really know what I'm trying to get at, but I just wanted to share a bit on my reflections as a photographer in the last four years.
(photos are from my recent Taiwan trip)
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