pixhellated

Some habits are hard to break. I have always thought of myself as a fine-art photographer, even back in the days when the splop that came out of my film cameras wasn't fine and certainly wasn't art. Digital accelerates the process while shortening the learning curve, but it also enabled me to produce egregious amounts of splop with my first digital camera.

Fine art was always the goal. Always. I needed to produce something gallery worthy or I wasn't. No, really. My entire self-worth as a human rode on the contents of that memory card and every shot that wasn't Ansel-esque later that day or night was personally devastating. I have been trying to reframe how I think about this over the years, but it's not easy.

This is how I found myself wandering a local car show with, yes, the Canon EOS R5 with Helios lens and Ray's Canon EOS 7D he left me when he passed because, god damn it, I am an accomplished fine art shooter and I need the tools for the job with me. The bargain 40D tagged along simply because it's my current vintage camera crush. Finally, I also had one other camera, my Q10 Printer Camera from Shenzhen Tianyuan Huitong Technology. Y'know the one that has the faux Polaroid stripes but wound up looking like a Land Camera and a Pridewalk had an openly gay baby? That camera. The kids camera that shoots out questionably safe paper prints (bisphenol coated paper - gotta die of something).

Taking shots that I know are going to look like crap after the fact makes me itch. Going on a shoot with nothing but the kids cameras even more so. Which is, well... Dumb? Yet I have some photo shoots planned this weekend with nothing but the thermal print cameras with me.

I got my first camera when I was five. I went around taking pictures of everything. It was amazing. I saw wonderful pictures of what I was capturing in my head and I enjoyed the hell out of it. It was a letdown when none of my first few rolls turned out at all, yeah, but I still had the fun of using the camera and it never went away when I was very young. It was the adult expectations that ruined it.

My mom: Film is expensive and we're broke. You only use the camera for important things, pictures of people. Pictures of family. You don't waste money processing pictures of things that are fun. That's not what cameras are for. That is when it started to become about what came out of the camera and it went downhill from there.

Sure, digital cameras got rid of the processing costs, mostly (unless you owned an Epson - don't get me started). But it wasn't about having fun. I spent a lot of money on that camera. And on the drive out to the location. I had better get some decent images to justify the trip. Justify all the expenses involved. This camera isn't just for fun, it needs to justify itself. What's on that memory card, boy? It's all a lot of pressure.

The thermal print camera? No pressure. You know it prints out dot matrix poopies. You don't care. It's fun. You get to have fun with this camera, and you know what? It's been decades since I was allowed to feel that way. To get some of that feeling of being five and roving about with my first camera again. To just enjoy walking with a camera outside, smelling the air, enjoying the compositions I see in my head, and giving zero fucks about the quality of the camera output. It's liberating.

The only way this gets better is if I find a pocket camera obscura on eBay.