My first of the roll

A lot of what goes into being a photographer is luck.

For those who are not familiar with photography–or film photography and negatives for that matter, let me explain a little bit before jumping into the importance of this frame to me. Film is reactive to light–in short that’s how a photo is created. When loading most 35mm film cameras, you pull the film across the camera, make sure it’s wound in the winding mechanism, close the camera–click, wind, click, wind–and then you have a clean frame to shoot on.

I never do the click, wind, click, wind.

Immediately, I start to take photos on the roll–and because of this, I end up with what most photographers call a “not clean frame” or a “burned frame”. I never know how far it will burn or even if the film burned at all–this is where luck becomes a factor.

The first shot on a roll has become the absolute most important photo to me. Sometimes it takes me so long to take the photo that I forget and fire off the frame without a thought-some of the best photos of this project have come from that very instance in time. Most of the time though it’s a long, slow process. I do tend to try framing these images on the right side of the frame because my burn comes from the left side of the frame.

No matter how it comes out, the burn is right–for me.

On going project, everything was shot on film.