Instant Gratification

For almost 2 weeks now, I have been fiddling around with an old Rolleicord 3 camera, which I borrowed from a dear friend of mine. In between figuring out how to use it and trying to take some good "retro" pictures, I took a snapshot of Valerie. Valerie approached me and asked if she could take a look at the image I just created.

I stopped and wondered how to explain to a 5 year old child that the image I just took cannot be seen until the negatives are processed and then either printed by a laboratory or scanned.

I then began to wonder if people will remember using film on their cameras, if it even crossed their minds that there was once a time when you took a picture and waited to see what came out of that mechanical box.

Having used digital cameras for a good number of years now, we have become so accustomed to having our need to see the images immediately satisfied that manual cameras such as the Rolleicord have become clumsy and curious devices. That we sometimes forget that these are the same clumsy devices that great photographers such as Avedon and Ansel Adams used to create their masterpieces.

This is not only true with photography but with other aspects of art and life as well.

Our need to be instantly gratified with the results of whatever we do has become tremendous that waiting, sometimes, is no longer an option that we consider.

Going back to my dear daughter's inquiry, I told her that she had to wait until the film got processed. She just shrugged her shoulders, turned and went on playing with her brother, as if to say "Whatever papa".