In my free time, or when I’m on vacation somewhere new, you can almost always find me with my trusty old Minolta XG-1 (35mm SLR film camera). This camera is nothing fancy, and to be honest I’ve put in more money in repairs and maintenance than the thing is worth, but I love it- it is my trusty old companion. This old camera not only introduced me to film photography as a hobby, albeit an expensive one, but it has also taught me one of life’s most important virtues: patience.

Film photography, as opposed to digital, requires you to understand the small machine you have in your hands, in order to understand how different settings will affect different shots. There is no autofocus on the XG-1, which means that you have to manually focus each shot to perfection, all of this without knowing how the shot actually came out. And once you are done with the roll of film, there is the dreaded wait of development of the pictures. This wait used to be the worst part for me, the anxious passing of time to see if every shot you visualized actually came true. Slowly, this anticipation became my favorite part of the experience. Now every developed roll of film makes me feel like a kid on Christmas morning, excited to see what surprise awaits. Yes, when a shot doesn’t come out good I do feel like an 8-year-old who just received socks as a Christmas gift, but when they come out good I feel like one who just got every item from their list to Santa.