If you could capture 36 moments, what would you choose? That’s the question I try to answer every time I pick up my film camera. Isn’t that exciting? The scarcity of it and the unknown forces me to choose which moments are truly important and worthy of living forever and what is more of the society induced ‘pic or didn’t happen’ instinct. It makes every choice just slightly more intentional and the final result (even if not so good) always has a bit more soul.

I love my technology, and I get easily excited by future-forward developments – from humanoids to dancing robots (yes, it’s a thing and you should watch it) to automated art. Nonetheless, that world is just as scary as it is exciting and my weapon of choice for fighting the fear is slower technologies / solutions which happen to be analogue ones.

While digital photography, especially smartphone photography is so convenient, you can easily check the shot, adjust it, repeat it and end up with 100 pictures of the same food plate which you didn’t care about in the first place, it loses the magic so quickly. Because it’s so easy, because it’s tied to social media, we sometimes focus more on the pictures rather than the moment itself. We look for the perfect one and are willing to spend way too much time until we reach THE ONE.

The reality is no one is perfect, no moment is perfect. That’s part of the reason why I like film photography. You will do your best and sometimes it works out. Other times it fails tremendously. And the best part? You won’t know until it’s 6 months down the line, you brought your few films to the place, the returned negatives and you get to explore what happened in the end.

Film photography forces me to think what I want to remember down the line, what really looks like magic to me, what stays as those 36 moments. It’s much more permanent choice and it’s a bit of Christmas magic. When you get the film developed, when you receive the photos, you pour through them, slowly, one by one and you love some of them, get very disappointed by others and then simply surprised by the rest. For me, it’s a magic. What is your magic?