For the love of the grain.
A love letter to analog.
Like any of my hobbies, this newfound passion has kicked off slowly, but it’s a hobby, after all.
With the pace of the world these days, moving slowly feels like a real luxury—a real treat to savour.
Why did moving fast become so important anyway? Were our ancestors always in a rush, too? Why are we all in a rush too?
Moving slow, my mind is tempted to entertain shame and guilt. It lures me to a feeling of being lazy.
But, is it wrong to feel entitled to my time? Is moving slowly all that bad? Is it terrible to want to reclaim my pace? Should I feel shame for wanting to slow down? Should I feel guilt for wanting to savour moments more?
What happens if I decide to take all the time in the world and go with the pace I feel I want instead?
Our time is finite; that’s what everyone says. Even more, the reason to revel in the delight of each passing moment, don’t you think?
I’ve become viscerally aware of my mortality the older I get— by observing elders or simply by feeling the things I could once do so easily.
I am still young by many measures. Yet, gone are the days of my earlier youth.
I am not in my twenties anymore, gallivanting through the evenings and parading till dawn. A lot has changed in my third decade on earth.
I have one rule: follow my flow.
In recent years, I’ve nurtured my flow more intently.
I need to feel like creating something before I go and create it.
I need to feel entirely invested in creating before I can do my best work.
This is why shooting analogue, on film, feels so cathartic:
You need to be fully invested because you need to stop everything you’re doing to find your focus point.
You’ll instantly appreciate the moment you want to capture rather than obsessing over the image's composition through a screen.
Your attention is on the subject you are shooting versus on other distractions.
You are forced to squint your eyes, to peep through a small hole with one eye, further demanding your full attention and a conscious gaze on the subject at hand.
You naturally become more intentional about what you want to capture because your film is finite.
The manual focus allows you to spend a few extra seconds to cherish what you’re attempting to capture.
Then, with no guarantees, you hope for the best, admiring one last time the exact moment you want to savour before that click seals it to memory forever.
There’s nothing like shooting on film.
I didn’t understand the hype until I tried it myself.
The more moments I capture, the more I realise that shooting on film is about drowning out the noise to zero in on a moment.
The mission is to capture the spark of a particular second I saw and to preserve it’s authenticity forever.
It’s about the patience to document it, but it’s also about the accuracy of translating how I saw the world at that moment of click.
Best of all, I never know how it’ll all look until it’s developed.
The light, the composition, the blur, the focal point, and, of course, the grain of each photograph—unedited, untouched, and entirely its own.
Like unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning, my favourite kind of unboxing is when I finally get to admire the scenes I’ve captured—in one glorious reveal of failures, mishaps, and beauty altogether.
I hope you enjoy some of the moments I’ve captured over the years.
They have never been shared anywhere else, but here. Enjoy and thank you for reading.
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