No, NOT another wedding for me :) …although just because I’ve failed 3 times, that does NOT mean I wouldn’t try a 4th!

Never, Never, Never give up!! – I think Winston Churchill said that.

I digress.

It is almost the end of July and that means it is almost birthday month!!! – YEA!!!

And after birthday month is September and if I live that long it will mean that I have survived yet another Summer.

I digress yet again – back to birthday month and something old, something new.

I ordered a kind of birthday present for me…from Etsy. …from a seller in Bulgaria. A very nice seller who sent me a wonderful note about being glad I was giving this item a home.

A new camera!

Actually, it is an old camera: a 35mm film camera.

My first “real” camera was a Minolta that my father bought me for my 16th birthday. I remember the story being that he found it in a used “bin” at a camera store. My brother, who is ALWAYS right, tells me that my father got it at a silent auction.

Whatever.

The Minolta that I was given was old(er) even then, but I remember it as wonderful and I have photos from it that are spectacular – in my opinion – and given what I know now.

I don’t think that this camera is the same as what I had but there are definite similarities.

When I saw the listing on Etsy, I just bought it.

Two of the food bloggers I follow shoot film and I’ve been thinking about film and wondering how I would do with film, knowing what I know now and understanding the timing issues as well as the shooting and processing issues.

We shall see.

I have 4 rolls of high speed color film zipping their way to me as I write.

A local photo store still develops film.

I will post the good, the bad and the ugly…hopefully the good will prevail.

As I waited for the camera and researched processing options and thought about the food bloggers and about things in my own life I’ve been thinking about… it occurred to me that this fits a theme I’ve been mulling: a “slowing down” theme. I’ve been simplifying and slowing down for years now, but lately…probably because it is Summer and I always think about changing things in the Summer (because I very much DISLIKE Summer!!!) – I thought about what it might mean to shoot film.

Film is slower in that I will shoot a roll of 36 photos before I take the film to a lab and wait 7-10 days for its return. And since I am paying for EACH, it is a vastly different exercise than digital which costs nothing but my time to take and review 50-100 images. And I am very good and very speedy at reviewing and deleting!

So…what will the film shooting mean to what I choose to shoot? And obviously, if any of the film images become part of a blog post, they will be somewhere in the 2-4 week time frame post shooting.

Slowing down.

I am not giving up digital – I LOVE digital, but I am certainly interested to see how shooting film turns out.

Something old, something new.