Back to the Future

Jun 1, 2017 | Sense8, snap!

As I mentioned back in January, we’re going on holiday shortly, up to Skye and Harris, and I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t been on Skye for a long time and have never been to Harris. From Harris we’ll take in Lewis, of course, and also a day trip to North Uist.

I decided some time ago that I would take only film cameras with me. I’m taking my old Canon AT1 and two medium format cameras–a Pentax 645 and a Pentax 645N (eBay has been good to me). My only digital camera will be the one on my phone.

A brace of Pentax and a Canon

So why film?

I’m not being wilfully ‘old school’ or ‘Luddite.’ I have 3 digital cameras I use, one of which, the Nikon D7000, has been my go-to tourist camera for a few years now. Nor do I think film is inherently better in some sense than digital; both have their pros and cons. But there are aspects of film that I like, and they are subjective.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about persistence of technology. Back in the nineties when I was looking at automated registration of title to land, I mused that:

One of the attractions of paper documents and records is that if properly cared for they can last for a long time and be available for consultation for future generations.   This is not obviously so with electronic archives: technological advancements have left inaccessible even documents committed to electronic storage very recently.

I’ve come to feel the same about photographs and photograph albums. I like the idea of a tactile thing that can be passed around, taken out on winter nights or by future generations long after digital pics have disappeared from view. I think memory as an artefact is worth preserving, to smile at, or perhaps recall the dead.

I know I could print digital pics, but it’s such a fankle that I don’t bother, and one day the hard drives they sit on will fail or go into landfill and the pics will vanish forever. That may be a good thing, maybe they are no more than ephemera, but I don’t think so. There is something about a photo album or a box of photos in the attic that excites and charms and evokes memory.

So I’m taking film and I’ll have them printed and I’ll put the good pics into an album marked up as Holidays 2017, and if you come round I’ll make you a cuppa and you can have a look.

And if you can’t make it round for a cuppa, don’t worry: I’ve had a gallery added to this site and I’ll start using it soon for new and archived digital photos.

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Postscript: as I’ve been writing this, word has come through that Netflix has cancelled Sense8. This is dumber than a dumb thing in a world of dumb.