Sure, I get frustrated when I agree to do some portraits for someone, and they don't show up. Yeah, I get a little ticked off when they don't even call. And yes, I'm aware that I almost never charge for the service. I don't mind covering the $50 or so that it takes to cover the film and developing. I need the practice and I love taking photos. So you'd think I could stay angry for a while, right?
Well, not really.
When someone shows up, working to deal with a novice photographer, my enthusiasm rises. The high I experience after seeing the finished product easily exceeds whatever lows I suffer through when someone blows me off.
This photo is of Desi. The scan isn't nearly as good as the photo; my scanner is old and tired, and it sometimes takes twenty minutes to tweak everything to obtain a reasonable digital reproduction.
I have a digital camera, but I still use film about half the time. Eventually I'll transition to maybe 95% digital, 5% film. Sometimes film is just the way to go. For example, with extremely long exposures, or times when you don't want to put your $1,000 digital camera at risk when a 25+ year old Minolta can handle the job; the replacement value of the Minolta is a fraction of the grand I paid for the Cannon Digital Rebel XT.
Not to mention the pride in knowing that you composed a shot, selected the exposure, snapped the shutter just knowing that the latent image on that strip of film is going to be hanging on your wall later that week. No need to digitally retouch the photo, or to check the results on the little LCD screen.
Right now, I'm still learning to use the digital camera. Maybe down the road I'll be able to post some more color portraits like this one.
