I can't find a specific area or thread for intros, so I guess I'll do this here?
I'm Chris and I found this forum through a Tapatalk search one day. I decided to take a look around about a week later, and then joined. I'm still not sure how this particular forum works, so forgive me for my errors until I get properly acquainted.
I'm 32, and live in Houston TX but I'm originally from South Louisiana. I originally learned photography in my high school darkroom class in 1995. Fast forward to 2008 - I purchased my first DSLR and became knee deep in mouse clicks. Around August 2011 I became fed up with what I sarcastically call the 'rat race' and decided that digital photography was not for me. I hated the 'race' of keeping up with the latest gear, technology, and software upgrades - and heaven knows I hated sitting in front of a computer for hours on in. I decided to try 35mm again, and started with a Nikon FM that I found on eBay. That first roll a year and a half ago led me into the onslaught of chemicals, film cannisters, trays, paper boxes, filters, safelights, and general mess that is now forcefully contained in my household utility room. There's a washer and dryer still in there somewhere, but you can't see it anymore due to the enlarger and stuff that's covering them.
I still have the Nikon FM, but I also shoot a Nikon F100, Hasselblad 500cm, a couple of Kodak Brownie Hawkeye's, some Bencini Koroll box cameras, a German Certo Phot, Polaroid Land Cameras - and I recently bough an Anniversary Speed Graphic 4x5 that I just shot yesterday for the first time, as well as a Yashica 635 TLR that I still have yet to shoot. And any day now a Polaroid SX70 is due to arrive on my doorstep so I'll be trying some Impossible stuff too. My theory is "try it all, before setting on one or the other..." so that's what I'm doing.
I came back to film because of the hand on process. For me it is very relaxing. I am a 911 operator and police dispatcher by trade, so I operate in a very high stress environment 12 hours a day. When I go into the darkroom with a little jazz music and some negatives, it really takes me out of everything and allows me to remove myself from my daily work life. I also enjoy the fact that there isn't a mouse click, or preset in the world that can make someone else's image look like the image that I create under my enlarger. It's mine, my hands made it - not a computer.
Anyway, that's me in summary. I'm also on other film forums like APUG and LFF under the same username, and I'm also on twitter @coyimages.
Thanks for allowing me to join, and I'm looking forward to meeting the rest of you!
