Todd Hido is my favourite photographer. His images are done on medium format cameras, they’re intense, incredibly moody and provocative. He confirms my belief and devotion to analog photography.

Two years ago I had my digital SLR stolen from a car. It was in a dirty backpack next to my friend’s Dior wallet and randomly scattered vintage jewelry. Did those get taken? No. The dirty satchel that contained the one essential tool I needed to do my job got taken-my camera. I’m a freelance photographer. At the time, I needed that camera to fulfill daily tasks of taking photos of restaurants, shitty clothing stores and portraits of activists for the local alt-weekly.

Soon after my camera was stolen, I lost my job at the newspaper partly because I couldn’t afford a new one. It sucked hard. No camera, no job, no money. The big 3 in professional photography. I still freelanced for other magazines and companies.

It turned out that having my camera got stolen was actually a great thing. I re-learned to love photography the way I did when I started out. I reconnected with it in a way that I couldn’t by shooting digital images. I had to use old cameras, take my time with the exposure and the composition. Instead of rapid fire shutter snapping, I would take 12 images in 5-30 minutes. I had to think about what I was doing. That’s what photography is to me- thinking about what I’m doing and then waiting a day to find out if my planning, hard work and thinking actually played out the way I wanted. It usually does. The lack of instant results keeps my interest piqued until those images come back to me. Digital photography was selling that experience short for me. I found myself not caring about what I was photographing, just “hoping” that in 300 photos, there’d be one that worked. Aspiring photographers-that’s the worst way to think when taking a photo. You have to connect with what you’re photographing. Draw the feeling out, take your time, think about what you want to convey.
I’m not against digital cameras. I’m all for them. But film has brought me back in a way that a digital camera couldn’t. Use what works.

Also check out Jason Nocito.