Film Photography Pt. 2: The Joy of Patience
Or, all the times I thought my film was ruined
The first time I thought my film was ruined I also thought my life was about to be ruined. My wife and I were flying to Boston, renting a car, and road tripping up to Acadia National Park in Maine.
Before our trip I read that certain X-Ray machines at airports can damage undeveloped film and that the best way to avoid this was to put your film rolls in a bag and then hand it to the TSA agent for a hand check, which seemed easy enough.
Wait, did I just put “easy” and TSA in the same sentence?
I handed off my film and they took it with no issues. I went through security and waited. You know that extremely vulnerable, terrifying wait where you just want to see your stuff come out of the X-Ray machine without being pulled aside? You are deeply nervous, but can’t betray your feelings because then you’ll look suspicious and then your bag will definitely be pulled aside and will be hand-searched and then they’ll find something in there and then you will be hand-searched and you’ll miss your flight and get arrested and charged with terrorism and then your life will be ruined? I don’t mean to brag about how great of a person I am, but I have never once considered committing an act of terrorism, yet I still feel like Mohamed Atta as I wait for my bag to come out1.
Anyway, my bag came out just fine.
Just as I started to grab my stuff the TSA agent came up to me with the bag of film. He told me the machine he ran it through gave a “chemical reading” and he would need to run it through the X-Ray machine. Of course the film gave a chemical reading. It’s film! I have no clue what he meant by this so I was like, “Uh, well it’s film. So I don’t know what my options are here.”
“Well I can either call the bomb team to inspect this or run it through the X-Ray machine,” he said.
So, naturally, I told him to call the bomb team over a couple rolls of film worth about $30.
Just kidding, I got real nervous and just said to run it through the machine.
Turns out that film under 800 ISO speed is fine to go through X-Ray machines. Something I wish I’d known before I got to the airport at 5 AM.
The second time I thought my film was ruined was in the hotel room in Boston as I tried to prep my camera for an upcoming day of sightseeing. When I had removed a roll of film from my camera in order to put in the Ziploc bag for the airport I realized that the film strip had been sucked completely up into the canister. So I pulled up several YouTube videos on how to fix this which involved using another roll of film, licking the strip on the new roll (tasted, oddly, like chemicals), and inserting into the problem roll. Supposedly the moisture would cause the two strips to stick together and would pull out the strip on the problem roll.
I tried this for about 15 minutes before giving up and plotting a stop at Hunt’s Photo & Video in Boston. There I purchased some fresh rolls of Kodak Portra film. They also told me they have a special device that gets film strips out of canisters, but, of course, I had left my roll in the hotel room.
The third, and final, time I thought my film was ruined happened at another Hunt’s Photo & Video, this time in South Portland, ME. Since I had so many issues with the film at the airport the first time, and I didn’t want to deal with mailing my film off to Garland Camera when I got home, I decided to drop my film off at Hunt’s before I left and have them develop the photos and scan them over to me. This seemed like a smart decision, but it was also terrifying knowing that I was going to be flying across the country without my film. They told me it would take two weeks, which is much longer than Garland takes but I was fine with that timeline.
Then, the very next day they called and said it was all ready for pickup. I was so confused. I explained that I had already left town and it was supposed to be scanned. Plus, they told me it would take two weeks. She apologized, said it was in the wrong pile, and that it would be taken care of.
I wasn’t so sure.
It was a harrowing two weeks waiting to see if they would ever actually get around to developing the film. I was incessantly checking my email. I called them a couple of times to check on it. I really didn’t want to lose the photos from this trip. I’d spent so much time (and nearly gotten the bomb squad called on me) making sure that my pictures would be good and I kept imaging everything getting messed up at this final stage.
I shouldn’t have been so worried about it, but film photography does something to me. I’m an instant-gratification type of guy. It permeates everything I do. Even in my writing. I’m going to finish this piece on a Monday and publish by Wednesday. I don’t sit on stuff and wait for it to come out. The wait between finishing a book and the publish date is excruciating for me. When I hear about actors who make a movie then wait two or three years for it to come out I am blown away. I can’t imagine doing that, I’d be trying to get my hands on a company and leaking it to pirating sites or something.
I also know that I need to get better about that. I need to be able to wait for things. That’s why film photography is a good hobby for me, because it makes me wait. I don’t know the results of my efforts immediately, like I would on a digital camera. I take a shot and wait for days and weeks to find out if it was a disaster or not. So far in my film journey I’ve found that it’s a combination of both. Every roll I’ve had developed has some amazing shots and some that were ruined. But those few beautiful frames keep me going. Exactly two weeks after I dropped my film off at Hunt’s in South Portland, ME they sent me the results. Just like they promised.
So with that preamble out of the way, here are some of my favorite shots from my trip to Boston, Portland, ME, and Acadia National Park.
And to prove that each roll has a few disasters, here’s the first photo of the whole trip. Even the disasters look kinda cool though
I hope you’ve enjoyed this two-part journey into my new hobby. I heard from several people who talked about their own hobbies and the benefits they get from them. What are yours? What’s something you want to start doing?
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I’m in a busy coffee shop writing that joke and I think I might be on some kind of watchlist now for having to Google the spelling of his name