We love live music because it is full of soul. We are seeking a shared experience, and those imperfections make us feel like we were there, in the room with the musicians.
It took me a long time to understand my dad’s love of recorded live music. I remember weekend mornings in our living room in the Caribbean when he’d play Jackson Brown or Neil Young or Bob Marley and I always preferred the studio versions, clean and polished. Why would I choose poor sound quality and ambient noise and imperfections.
But my dad preferred the live recordings and, these days, I agree.
I’ll bet you do too. Why?
Do we actually love the imperfections? I doubt it. We love live music because it is full of soul. We are seeking a shared experience, and those imperfections make us feel like we were there, in the room with the musicians. I think our soul can sense that live music is more real, because a performance happens only once – you can’t redo it.
Film photography is just like that. Once you press the shutter button and expose a negative to the light, you can’t redo it. A physical copy of that moment now exists. It will be imperfect in the way that life is imperfect, and this realization of truth helps you relive the experience every time you see the photo.
The images below are all film, all personal images. Can you feel the soul?
So after all of that, now I’m going to tell you that my regular sessions are still mostly digital. Truthfully, I’m still scared of film. Film means I get way less pictures each session and my ability to “fix” an imperfect photo is far more. I’m still learning to accept that loss of control.
So I am starting small. As of this writing, you to experience the soulfulness of film by adding film to your Family Session. For a small fee, I’ll bring a film camera and two rolls of film. Here’s where you can learn about adding film to your photo session.
Inspired By Film
(click to view)
