The value of analog in a digital world

I still recall the glow of the red lamps in the darkroom. My dad's hand-me-down Canon A-1 clack of the shutter and squeak of the film advance lever. The anxiety about handling chemicals and the quiet thrill when an image began to appear on paper like a magic trick. Those prints weren't great — soft focus, awkward compositions — but they were mine.

This was early high-school. In the years that followed, hormones and homework distracted me and the camera collected dust. When I started traveling I picked up photography again, only this time it was digital: higher ISO, burst shooting, and large storage meant I could shoot endlessly. But I’d come back to the hotel, download hundreds of photos, and feel… nothing.

The outcome of technological advancement has been anodyne ubiquity. I’d visited amazing places, but the photos I took were the same as thousands of others—only the megapixels and depth of field from my DSLR separated me from tourists with iPhones. Sure, I’d developed some skill over the years, but not enough to overcome the sterility of digital sensors.

For a period of time, heavy editing was the trend—people sold photo presets and filters as a way to stand out, to make the digital feel unique again. Every culture has a counterculture, and this movement was the prescription to the banality of digital. Later, film crept back into my feed—familiar grain, light leaks, sprocket holes. It was a logical extension of the counter-culture to digital.

So I dug my old Canon out of storage, winced at the price of film, bought some anyway. YouTube reminded me how to load the roll and I set off into the city, armed with a blast from the past. Thirty-six shots. Every squeeze of the shutter felt like a wager: Is this worth spending two dollars on this photo? Half the time, I’d raise the camera, compose, and decide not to take the shot. It took me months to finish my first roll, and when the lab scans dropped into my inbox a week later, the images were crooked and grainy — but somehow alive.

That's the paradox: technology continues to strip friction in our lives. To help us find shortcuts to answers. But the human condition is rooted in the journey of a lived experience. And as we accelerate into digital, our humanity pulls us back to analog.

Why buy vinyl over streaming?

Why send postcards when we can email?

Why use film cameras when we all have camera phones in our pockets?

These ‘old’ and tactile experiences reconnect us with what it means to be human. The struggle to get something to work, the reward when it does. As technology accelerates toward diminishing returns—not just in camera sensors, but in AI—the human element will become even more coveted. And nothing is more human than imperfection.

AI is advancing in pursuit of the perfect response. But it’s absent of any lived experience. No story, no scars, no sentiment. It pulls from all sources and returns only the highlights absent any feeling of what it was like to take the shot.

To this day I still have some of my high-school prints framed — not because they were spectacular — but sentimental. They remind me of those days spent walking around my home with a camera in hand. That the point isn't to get the most perfect shots, but just enough imperfection to prove a human was here.