"Happy" mistakes
Gaby
By virtue of my new job, I care more about film photography than I ought to. What I once thought was a hobby very exhaustive of time, resources, and money is now… well, still that, but not without its perks, I think. You could say I’m a convert.
Being born in the aughts, I practically had no firsthand experience with going analog. My parents–-more so my mother–-were avid digicam users, documenting each and every bit of childhood my sister and I would have otherwise forgotten. Simultaneously, 35-millimeter snapshots of their own lives were already boxed away in storage, not to be viewed or reminisced until years later. Much of puberty and early adulthood bore even less fruit; with the exception of the film renaissance everyone (or everyone in my high school, at least) had in the mid to late 2010’s, life got more and more high-tech.
Fast-forward another ten or so years. With the world somewhat free of COVID and unreasonably priced Kodak ColorPlus 200s, casual shooters and expert photographers alike rejoiced. Falling into my line of work couldn’t have been more timely—for once, I felt like I could pursue analog photography without a myriad of concerns to lose sleep over. One particular incentive that got me to start was an assortment of old-school cameras lying around in the company office, free to borrow from at any time (granted that I first finish design tasks, of course).
Before anything else, I of course did some research. My first day on the job included browsing through a three hundred-page product catalog. After that, it was vlogs and reviews that generally covered the technicalities of shooting film. Even outside the confines of work, my will to learn was unbridled. In no time, it seemed I was ready to put theory into practice.
The practice, however? Not great. Near-horrible, if I were to succumb to my flair for the dramatic.
Thanks to a generous coworker-turned-friend, I was blessed with a roll of 120 film to test out on a weekend in Antipolo. Ensuring high-quality resolution required high-quality handling, as the stock is bigger and more light-sensitive than its 35-millimeter counterpart. For me, loading the stock into a camera was a breeze. Shooting, even more so. You could imagine, then, the anticipation draining from my face as the roll came out blank a week post-development. No grainy, underexposed vignettes or shots wildly out of focus; just twelve whole squares of nothing, never having recorded what I thought was going to stay with me forever. (It sucks so much more that I didn’t bring a digicam for backup. You were right, Mom. As per usual.)
Upon further investigation, this was most likely caused by faulty battery mechanisms that were beyond my control. Still, I was gutted. Many tried to assuage my disappointment—friends, family, the office, even the development lab that offered one hundred pesos off my next order—but such only festered when more attempts (the second and third still making use of 120 film but with a different camera, and the fourth a stint with Instax Squares) had errors of their own. I knew from the get-go that film photography often flirted with chance, but for some reason the unpredictability bothered me more than it would have in other hobbies, the weight of error more real and undeletable as it physically piled up on my hands. On my desk, in the half-light of my office salvaging a measly amount of pictures via Adobe Lightroom, I just couldn’t help but wonder: Did I just waste money and process technicians’ time? How did those that came before me deal with the seemingly endless trial and error? Why pursue photography at all if it’s just going to stress us the fuck out?
The clear, level-headed answer would be to Bob Ross my way out of frustration. More important than any tool in an artist’s craft is the patience it takes to see a project through to completion, whether or not the end product is anything at all like what you imagined. Considering that I wield the double-edged sword of stubbornness, however, I know I will find this belief hard to subscribe to without suppressing armories of anger and doubt.
Little by little, I hope to rectify this somehow. There is a manual for one of the work cameras collecting dust on our shelf, embracing “happy mistakes, perfect imperfections, and flying rulebooks”—three concepts I find pretty ironic for what essentially is a rulebook just written in kinder (or to me, on my worst days and in no real offense to older, wiser coworkers who’ve authored it, condescending) language. I haven’t actually read the thing yet, but the sheer optimism and self-acceptance is inspiring, to say the least. After all, it’s not like I will get a medal for getting things right the first, second, or even five-hundredth time, as I so often believe in the back of my mind. My love for the game—the game being creating—is enough to render most if not all inconveniences worthwhile.