Remember this post when I was so excited to introduce my newest camera? For the past few months we've been exploring what it means to shoot with film. Last week we received our first order back from Richard Photo Lab and I was blown away with the result. People have been asking me if there's a visible difference between film and digital. And to be completely honest my answer is a definitive I don't know. For the most part I can tell when a photographer shoots with film versus when he or she shoots digitally. But there are ways, really, really good ways off camera, through Photoshop and a variety of other software, to make digital pictures appear nearly identical to film. So what, then, is the real difference between the two? I can only speak for myself but in my personal experience it has less to do with the look of the image than it does with the feel. Last week, as Colton and I anxiously looked through the proofs of our negatives, I couldn't help but feel as though we were looking at something special, something timeless. It's one thing to sit at your desk and look at your photos on a computer screen. But it is another thing entirely to open up a box of prints and feel them between your fingers. To see your images in all their grain and grit and glory and to really, actually feel them. As crazy as it is a printed picture is somewhat hard to come by in today's world. We take our images from the DVD and download them to our laptop before uploading them to Facebook for the world to see. And I definitely get it, I did the exact thing with my own wedding photos just over a year ago. But with film I'm forced to actually take note of a photograph's physical existence. I load the film, I think about each click of the shutter, and I see the images for the first time in my own hands. It gives me a whole new appreciation for what emotion photography can evoke.

I'm posting a few shots from our first few adventures with film. I apologize in advance for the number of pictures of myself. It's embarrassing and I cannot help but feel like the person who makes a Facebook album and tags herself in every picture (you all know exactly who I'm talking about). Go ahead and judge, I'm doing the same thing. But I think these pictures are a good representation of the look and feel of film - a look that can't quite be put into words. I'd be remiss if I didn't say that Colton took the majority of these pictures which, like always, fills me with equal parts pride and raging jealousy.

...but maybe a little more jealousy.