We know that unlimited choice isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and it turns out that immediacy, for some of us at least, has significant downsides too.
In a conversation with my son about my disinterest in almost everything on the TV coupled with weariness at sifting through the thousands of films and series that are available on the plethora of streaming platforms, we arrive at the popular topic of social media.
I am as happy as the next man to scroll my way through hundreds of posts on Twitter and TikTok paying scant regard to all but a handful but it always leaves me feeling emotionally hollow and a little bit dirty.
“Even photographs don’t hold the magic they once did,” I tell him bored too of the ease with which I can take a hundred snaps on my phone, manipulate them with all manner of software, and make them look like every other post on Instagram for reasons that elude me.
“Film photography is making a comeback for that reason,” he says. “The aesthetic is different and more, I don’t know, real.”
Suggesting a new hobby to me is like telling Toad from “Wind In The Willows” that it’s going to be “the next big thing”.
Less than a week later I have bought two vintage film cameras, some lenses, and a bunch of films, and I’m out in the fields trying to sort my aperture from my shutter speeds reflecting on how it was never this complicated with my “Boots Instamatic” back in the 1970s.
It’s incredibly tricky and I have no idea what I’m doing but, boy, is it making me happy.
My walks seem to be more intense. Slower, more deliberate, and in which I am noticing tiny aspects of everything around me that I hitherto hadn’t.
In the days that follow a few related things start to fall into place.
The reason I feel so bored with watching TV is that, when I find a series I like, I binge it and it’s over before I’ve had time to enjoy its beginning.
I begin to recognise that on those nights when I can’t be bothered to cook and order takeaway it isn’t the cost that makes me feel uncomfortable, it’s the unrewarding simplicity of it. The lack of “hands-on” effort making me slightly miserable.
I start to feel more certain about what I enjoy and why. It appears that I like things moving slowly rather than fast which, in a world that craves immediacy, might make me an outlier but, if so, I’m glad to be one.
The click of the mechanical shutter, the winding of the film, the smooth turn of the lens as I focus on another inadvertent shot of my dog’s arse. It’s truly joyful.
In his book “The Case For Working With Your Hands” Matthew Crawford extols the virtues of doing practical tasks that make your hands dirty and the benefit it has to our mental health.
Gardening, breadmaking, playing the guitar, writing, and now film photography. All the things I love most involve me doing something with my hands. No wonder I’m tired of lazily snapping on my phone and sitting in front of the TV.
While I wait for my first film to return from the processor I experience again the excitement of waiting to see if any of the shots are actually any good, a kind of jeopardy that feels wholly positive.
When they arrive some are wildly out of focus, most are either under or over-exposed, and the rest are, technically speaking, simply not very good but nothing will wipe the grin from my face.
“Shall we have a takeaway tonight? You don’t want the oven on,” my daughter suggests on a particularly sultry July afternoon.
“No, I’m making dinner, and you can help me pick the radishes. Then we’ll place them carefully on a wooden chopping board so I can take pictures of them before we eat.”
Leave a Reply