Poor Paul Simon!

This post requires you to know that I'm a bit of a shutter bug. While my level of seriousness varies over time, from periods of slackness where I'm content to carry around a pocket digital, while my film SLR and lenses languish in their bag, to periods of fever pitch insanity where I'm ready to run out and spend money I don't have on an elaborate mahogany and brass 4x5"; where I back everyone I meet into a corner, where I talk at them about leaf shutters until their eyes gloss over. As obsessions go, I think this ranks among the more harmless ones, just so long as I don't really decide to get that 4x5".

I don't pretend to be a professional, or even, to be a good photographer. I just know I enjoy it; the heft of the camera, seeing the world through the finder, dividing it up, composing it how I want it, stealing a moment in time and keeping it for myself. But most of all, I love getting the film back from processing and pawing though the prints, or, slapping them down onto the light table, seeing what worked, what didn't, and what surprises you. It was magic for me as a kid, and it still is now. It's part of what keeps me coming back, and part of what keeps me from really taking digital seriously. Don't misunderstand. I'm not some sort of Luddite who would rather we hadn't progressed beyond wet plates and tin-types. I know that digital has its place, that it isn't going away, and that it's even getting to the point where it's as good as film, but I can never shake the feeling I get every time I squint at the LCD on the back of a camera, that I'm cheating.

And so, in spite of the cries about the death of film that come ringing in from the digital frontier, when it comes to things besides snap-shots, I will continue to use film, if only because it's the only bit of magic that I really have left in this mundane little world. It's what makes this news all the sadder for me. While I've never shot a roll of the stuff in my life, my childhood is bound up with it, in the interminable slide-shows in my grandpa's basement, in the pages of National Geographic, and Arizona Highways. It's the reason I wanted to point a camera at things, and kept wanting to point a Camera at things until I could make a picture that matched the world that I saw in my head, and why I needed to wait until I was 16 or 17 to know who Ansel Adams was (that guy with a beard and that annoying zone system I need to remember for the test next week), but knew Steve McCurry was great when I was six, even if I didn't know his name.

And so, heedless of my nostalgia, progress marches on, leading us all to a cleaner, sleeker, more convenient world where I won't have ever have to wait for anything ever again, let alone mourn for something that I never missed until it was gone.