Remembering to slow down

One of the reasons I was attracted to going back to film photography, other than the aesthetic of how pictures taken on film look, was that it would - I hope - take me out of the always on, informational overload of our digital lives, and back to a time when things were just a little slower and simpler.

Those of you of a certain vintage will remember a time when everything ever created or thought about wasn't accessible in a few millisecond Google search. As a Generation X-er, growing up in the analogue 1980s meant getting books out of the library if you wanted to find out about something, getting to the library on a bus - the timetable for which was actually printed at the bus stop, not a QR code away, and using a map - or the good old London A to Z - to get there. Sitting on the bus was not time spent scrolling but time spent looking out the window (preferably at the front on the top deck) at the world around you - widescreen observation, not small screen introversion.

Meeting friends was something you arranged the day or week before, not facilitated by dropping pins or sharing locations. TV was something you sat down to do as a family, waiting patiently for next week's episode, rather than binge watching on your iPad or laptop. Music was something you listened to on the radio, and if you really liked some songs you heard from a particular artist then - savings permitting - you'd catch the bus (again!) into town to your local branch of Our Price or Woolworths to pick up the single or album.

Photography back then - at least as far as I can remember it - was an odd mixture of scarcity and patience. Scarcity because film was finite and you were always worrying that you'd run out of frames on your film halfway through your package holiday to Tenerife (booked at a high street travel agent, or if you were proper modern through teletext). Patience because you then had to wait to get home, take them to the local Boots to get processed, and wait at least a week for the prints to be ready (or even longer if you'd used one of those mail order developers).

So maybe I was hankering after a little bit of that 1980s pace of life when I decided to switch from my digital SLR back to a film camera. Except I realised that slowing down is a lot harder than you think when our mindset is optimised for today's pace of life.

What do I mean by that? Well, essentially, there is no limit to how many photos you can take on a digital camera provided you've got a decent size memory card. And you can use the screen to look at the picture you've taken instantly and delete it instantly if you're not happy. For me at least, that convenience translates into trigger happiness. There's no cost to each image and therefore I will happily walk around snapping at anything and everything. In artistic terms I guess it's like throwing jelly at a wall and hoping that what remains - after most of the jelly has slopped onto the floor - are a few good photos.

I expected this to be different with a film camera. Film is finite, and pretty expensive also. I expected that this would force me to slow down - make me really think about the shot I was taking, was the light right, how could I frame it better, was it worth a frame at all. But on that train ride home I realised I'd been walking around almost in a rush - pointing, shooting and snapping away. I did think I was slower than with a digital camera, but not that slow. In my defence I was fighting against the light. I'd chosen to get there about an hour before sunset to catch the nicest light - I'm not so devoted to photography (yet) that I want to get up super early to catch the very early morning sun - so I knew I only had limited light and time to work with.

So my challenge for the future is to really slow down when I have a camera in my hand. I've set myself the target that I will go out for one lengthy photography session a week so I'm going to have plenty of opportunity to practice slowing down.

In this post are some of the results from that evening's session. Borough is a wonderful place to walk around on a warm summer's evening. I love the way its trendy bars and restaurants squeeze into every inch of the archways and steel girders that support the railway lines above. There are some fantastic old buildings dating from the mid-late 19th century - a few of which I've captured in the first three pictures.

And then there are a few images of the market itself - covered by an ornate wrought-iron and glass roof structure, built in the 1850s. I'm not quite sure my photos have done the structure justice and I definitely need to make a note to get back there when the market is actually on.

The last image here is an archway within the market complex. I'm a sucker for an archway and this one was backlit by the evening sun - too much to resist.

Overall I'm relatively pleased with some of these images. But I can't help thinking that I might have got some better pictures if I'd remembered to slow down, take my time and really look for the frame rather than shoot the first thing I see.

Old habits, it seems, die harder than I thought.