There is no substitute for the process.
We live in a society devoutly dedicated to instant gratification. Within the last fifteen years, telephone conversations have been shortened to the truncated jargon of text messaging, a night at the movie theater supplanted by TIVO and Netflix, and film photography made obsolete by digital. Digital is convenient, relatively cheap, and provides instant results. Whereas photographers 20 years ago had to employ Polaroid backs to check exposure as they shot, today's amateurs and professionals need only compose, snap, and look. If they are unhappy with the result, repeat.
Digital has undeniably appeal and useful application (newsrooms throughout the United States have overwhelmingly replaced 35mm film with digital). But at what price? What was lost in the transition from film to digital? Black and white film photography offers even the beginning amateur the ability to wholly guide his or her shot from the viewfinder to the matted, framed print. While admittedly cumbersome, this three-stage process of shooting, developing, and printing provides a unique experience inaccessible to the digital photographer. Digital puts an undue premium on the final result, rather than exalting in the process as does film. It is the solitude of shooting in the field, the quiet concentration of the development, and the visceral anticipation and satisfaction of the red-lit darkroom that originally fostered my love of photography 15 years ago--in the absolute magic of a damp, dank high school darkroom.
Nothing quite like working with film
The exhilaration of feeding 35mm into the take-up spool in a manual camera. The optimistic feel of the blind loading of film onto a reel and dropping into a tank. The satisfaction of sandwiching the negatives between glass and viewing the image below the enlarger, like a ghost against a white wall. These are just a few of the unquantifiable joys of working with film.
How restrictions cultivate creativity
While the digital photographer might set out with an empty flash drive and some 500 shots, the film photographer is limited by film. One roll of 35mm film yields 24 or 36 exposures. 120 film, only 12, and depending on the format, often 10 or fewer. Cost aside, every shot counts. With no easy way to check exposure on the fly (and as b/w exposure is more demanding than color), the film photographer is forced to master his technique.
The film photographer is also more likely to experiment with in-camera effects such as double exposures, filters, and homemade lenses and techniques not required of the digital photographer who may creatively post-process his images with digital programs from software companies like Adobe and Corel.
