Something’s happened to me over the past year. Something puzzling and slightly troubling to my creative side. Outside of my professional work, I have thousands of images patiently waiting in my Lightroom Catalog to be discovered, patiently waiting for a personal caress from me to make it off of my hard drive and into the world. Although I have a deep love for these recorded moments, I’ve found the motivation to give them the attention they deserve lacking.

In the meantime, I’ve been slowly racking up rolls of film too. Just like the neglected digital files, these little spools have been collecting dust in my office also waiting for development. In all honesty, they have felt more like another obligation to complete in a pile of unfinished projects. (It should come as no surprise that I chose the word complete as my theme for this year. Perhaps you can relate!) With the conclusion of my second disposable camera for The Indisposable Concept, not to mention a looming blog post on the subject of film, some action was finally in order. I took the train downtown to center city, dropped my film off at Philadelphia Photographics and picked it up earlier this week.

It was almost a year ago that I gathered my various SLR cameras to dabble again in 35mm film. You might recall that I was rather dubious about the whole thing, the resurgence of film and the reasons behind it. That was then. But on Monday I picked up my film, six glorious rolls shot over the course of almost a year alive with amazing memories hidden to me these past 11 months, and I am totally smitten.

This is now.

Death Valley with Debra and our time in Palm Springs for Oasis.

DeathValley
Chairs

Christmas decorations gracing our lilac bush in winter.

ChristmasBalls

Coffee, cake and Polaroids while meeting my dear photo-friend Heather.

Coffe&Polaroids

Hilary’s fledgling garden from our visit  to San Francisco, and the delicious flight of wine over lunch in Sonoma with muse-alumni Kim.

Plants
WineTasting

Tender moments spent with my parent’s cat Grace on her last day with us.

Grace

And Negril, beautiful, relaxing, soothing images from Jamaica and the zinnias that awaited me in bloom upon our return.

Jamaica_FWIS
Zinnias

So maybe it snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking. Maybe it was the time in between shooting these rolls of film that I needed. And maybe it’s that many of the images I’ve been collecting over the past several months just have that filmy feel, but I discovered something while sitting in my car on 13th street after picking up those rolls of film. I found out that once again I appreciate grain, that I revel in fixed colors that can’t be changed, that I appreciate just a few precious frames devoted to one moment instead of dozens that can be deleted. With the city traffic whizzing by and the air conditioning pumping, I learned on a hot summer’s day in 2013 that once again, I am smitten. Once again, I am smitten with film. Later the next day I found myself digging into my Lightroom catalog to edit a few of those long-neglected digital files and wondered to myself, “How many of these will look like film too?”

How about you? Have any of your own film revelations lately? Share with us in comments.

Cheers!
Holly ~ Soupatraveler

beer

 

*   *   *   *   *

A few months ago we featured The Indisposible Concept here on Mortal Muses. The premise behind the concept is that you get “one roll of film, one week, 24 moments” to share your world. Each submission is featured on their blog. I just completed two disposable cameras for the project that I’ll be sending over in the next few days. Muses Jenny GraverVanessa Snow (you might remember her post about it) and Vanessa Simpson have all participated. In a few months I’ll be writing a follow-up to our challenge to get you involved with your own submission to the project. If you’d like to have your indisposable submission featured on Mortal Muses, get shooting and be sure to send us a note with your submission link.