Adventuring back into Film with my Canon AE-1

When I was a kid and all the way through my teens all I knew was film photography. Digital cameras were not commonly used until I was in my late teens; and I didn’t handle a digital camera, myself, until I was about 21 years old. Even so, when I got the itch to dip my toes back into film photography, I felt completely clueless on the matter. I still do, really. After not even touching a film camera in about 13 or 14 years, I bought myself a trusty 1979 Canon AE-1 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens off Craigslist. I shot within my personal everyday life in
St. Joseph, Michigan and on a little adventure to Chicago. Film has such an amazing, authentic grittiness to it that you just can’t capture with digital photography. And all the imperfections that are so easily edited out with digital photography… well, you can still edit the shit out of film photos but it’s so much easier to simply fall in love with the imperfections and view them as giving the image character.

These photos were taken in November and December 2014. I used Kodak Professional TRI-X 400 black and white film and Kodak Ultramax 400 color film | Developed and scanned by Indie Film Lab.

Canon AE-1 with 50mm lens