Film & The Gift of the Present

What makes film photography so special

Mar 01, 2026

By O.W. Root modernlives.substack.com

We take more photos than ever before in human history. I believe it must be an indisputable fact that, by virtue of the ever expanding influence of the smartphone, more photos were taken last year than 10 years prior. And more photos were taken this year than last year. And more photos are taken today than were taken yesterday. No matter when you read this, these facts will all remain true as the number of photos captured only increases as we careen toward a more and more technologically saturated future.

We all click away endlessly on our iPhones snapping 14 versions of the same shot just to make sure we have one that’s exactly right. We’ve got to get it right, right? But right for what? What exactly is achieved by taking all these photos and storing them in our various digital archives? They are saved to our phones for a while, and we forget about most, we transfer them to our computers when we run out of disk space, and do it all over again. We are all weary caretakers of digital catacombs full of countless images we don’t really remember.

We don’t ever remember the memory the photo was supposed to capture because we were too obsessed with taking the perfect photo 14 times. That’s the sardonic irony of it all. Of the cloud, of the smartphone, of digital photography. When something is infinite it doesn’t matter much, does it? Well, it could, or maybe it should, but it doesn’t.

We just can’t seem to value that which we can always get more of. We don’t value air until we are suffocating. We don’t value our health until we are sick. We don’t value our photos until they are finite.

That’s the beauty of film photography. It’s not only that inescapably vintage aesthetic, though it is certainly that. It’s not just that magical warmth that can’t really be described, though that’s where the heart of the aesthetic lives. It’s not just the act of creating the physical image, though that matters more than we realize. It’s that film photography, much like life, is finite. There are only so many photos in a roll and when they are done, they are done. There are only so many shots to spend on the reunion, on the hike, on the boat, on the beach, at the dinner, on our lives. Indeed, we only have so many days to spend, only so much life to live.

The photos I treasure most are all, invariably, film. When the email comes letting me know that my film has been developed, my scans have been uploaded, and are now available for viewing, I feel like a child waking up on his birthday knowing that there will be presents shortly. I took all 36 photos, and all 36 images disappeared inside the thin little roll. I wound it up, took it out, packed it up, sent it in, and waited. And now, sitting at my desk, opening the recently downloaded folder and finally looking at those finite memories captured on film is a gift that only comes with patience.

Every film photo, no matter the focus, no matter the subject matter, draws me toward it in a way a digital photo never will. It’s all the things we know: the physical, the vintage, the warmth, and the finite. But it’s something else too.

Something deeper in the image, something hidden in the grain, something private in the shadows under the tree on the sunburnt hill, something that makes us stop, something that makes our eyes turn soft. It sounds made up until you know it, and once you know it you know it. It’s the magic of film.

But the beauty of film isn’t only in the result, it’s also in the act. You press your index finger, you hear the shutter flick, an image is burned into the little brown roll in the camera body. The moment has passed and something was created. A physical memory. Something real happened. You can’t look at it, you can’t tell how it turned out, you don’t know for sure that your focus was right or if the exposure was locked in. You can’t do anything now, so you just move on to the next moment.

It’s in this way film draws us back into the present. We can’t revisit the 83 photos we just took. We can’t marvel at the scene on our phone while the very same scene is still standing right in front of us waiting for our presence. We can’t lose ourselves in the endless digital world. There’s no swiping, no clicking, no editing, no Instagramming, no posting to stories, no live-streaming. There’s only the moment.

In a world full of digital distractions, a world where we get mind-numbing notifications about work while we are trying to take a photo that’s supposed to mean something to us, film photography is an exit away from the distractions of the madhouse, and an entrance to peace in the present. It doesn’t matter the camera, the effect is always the same. It doesn’t matter if you are shooting on a Leica or a vintage point and shoot; the present is always the present.

To be in the present is a treasured gift. It’s an oasis and a luxury in an era of endless distraction. Film is a gateway to that fragile world of simple presence. To be in the moment, and to remember it later in the most potent physical form we know.

I shoot film just about every day on all sorts of cameras and all kinds of film stock. I love shooting on my old Nikon F2 with a 80-200mm lens. The camera is a tank on its own, and that long lens turns it into a bona fide weapon. The shots are everything I want them to be. Deep, rich, heavy. They are the real deal and I love that old dog.

I also love my blissfully 90s Ricoh R-125Z. It’s a simple point and shoot with an oddly stunning 38-125mm zoom lens. It’s so different than the F2. It’s light, simple, and easy. Truth be told I really do feel like a dad in 1996 when I pull it out to get a shot of my kids chasing a seagull on the beach. I love shooting on disposable cameras. They are the cheapest camera you can buy. They are, literally, designed to be used once and then thrown away not long after. They are cheap, light, flimsy, and they too, return us to the present.

This last summer I took disposable cameras on our family trips. They were perfect, absolutely perfect. The shots are grainy. The colors are washed out and careless. The cameras are unimportant and they are psychologically anti-fragile for that reason. I threw them in the glove compartment, dropped them at the bottom of the beach bag, stuffed them in my back pocket, and let my kids shoot whatever they wanted with them. No focus, no manual adjustments for the exposure, no ISO concerns, no lenses to carry, no worries about anything other than grabbing a shot (read as: a memory) and moving on.

Looking back at those photos from our summer disposable cameras is particularly surreal. The photos from those cheap little cameras possess something that even my nearly half a century old F2 can’t quite capture.

The photos exude a vibe and aesthetic that approaches something that I can only describe as nostalgic present memory. They feel like looking back into my past childhood and my children’s current childhood all at once. Carefree, here, in the present.

Even the cheapest film cameras, disposables, are capable of giving us that which our iPhones can never gift. There are no news notifications, no text messages, no emails, no pestering work, no labyrinth of endless images, no fraught concern about scratching a screen or protecting anything physically valuable, nothing there to draw us away from the only thing that matters.

Life, here, in the present.

O.W. Root of Necktie Salvage writes The Fitting Room every week giving a detailed insight into what to wear, how to wear it and when to wear it. Read more of his work and subscribe at necktiesalvage.substack.com.

He also publishes Modern Lives where he shares stories of our lives in the modern world - into the present and into the future. Subscribe at modernlives.substack.com. You can reach O.W. Root on X @OWRoot and Instagram @OWRoot.