Why bother with those negatives?

I have a friend from the days when I worked as a photojournalist. Michał is older than me and has been in the business for a really long time. Half of that job is waiting, so standing around and freezing we talked shop. That’s when I heard him say: “If something happened and we had to go back to shooting on film, I think I’d rather dig ditches.”

It stuck with me and I think about it often. Because really—why am I so stubborn about analog photography? It’s expensive and inconvenient, with uncertain results and a higher risk of accidentally destroying the effects of often tedious work. So why put yourself through it?

Part of the answer can be summed up as “technical matters.” I really like analog cameras; I really like the loud clack of my Mamiya’s shutter; I really like the gentle resistance of a tightly rolled film when I wind it on. Analog photography is a sensory experience for me—and honestly, when I take a roll out of that crinkly, colorful wrapper, I get excited like a kid unwrapping candy. Small everyday pleasures.

Here and now

But shooting on film has more serious consequences, too. For example, it forces very deep consideration of the frame. A single roll of 120 film holds only 15 frames (in 4.5 × 6 cm format), and you really have to think through every press of the shutter, because the stuff is damn expensive. And you’ll see the result only after a few days, when nothing can be repeated—if only because it takes a lot of time and effort to reach some of the forest locations I visit.

Before I expose a negative, I need to know exactly what the photo will look like. Awareness of the frame is a necessity in photography in general, but in analog it’s downright critical.

I think it’s a bit like in The Empire Strikes Back, when Master Yoda said: “Do or do not. There is no try.” I can’t take a test shot—first, because I only have a handful of frames at my disposal, and second, because I have no way to check the result right away.

I have to say I really like this kind of focus: staring into the viewfinder before releasing the shutter, in a way sinking your awareness into the image you’re about to fix on film.

Real things

There’s also a third factor—and I think it’s the most important one for me. An exposed negative is proof that the photographed scene, object, or person truly existed. Maybe I’m overly suspicious, but as I write this I treat every digital image as AI-generated by default, until it turns out otherwise.

The forest I photograph is real—and I have negatives that confirm it. Maybe it’s excessive caution, but at least my inner documentarian (a slightly neurotic type, let’s be honest) is satisfied.

I find something soothing in the fact that from those hours spent in some thicket or in mud, something tangible remains—some real thing I can touch, and whose existence will testify to what truly was. That, in my view, is the deepest meaning of documentary photography.