Something has been quietly happening in photography over the last several years.
Not in the professional world — professionals have been digital for decades and that isn’t changing. But among everyday people who love making images, something has shifted. Film cameras are selling again. Darkrooms are opening. People who grew up entirely in a digital world are loading rolls of 35mm film into cameras they found at thrift stores and discovering something they weren’t expecting to find.
The Twin Cities is part of this. I’m seeing it in the conversations I have with clients, in the questions people ask me at the end of sessions, in the genuine curiosity that comes up when people find out I’ve been working in film and darkroom photography for decades.
This post is about why I think analog photography is having a real moment — not a trend, not a nostalgic blip — and what that means for people in Minnesota who want to learn it.
What’s Actually Driving the Film Photography Revival
It’s Not Nostalgia — It’s a Reaction to Abundance
The easiest explanation for the film revival is nostalgia. People miss the way things looked. They want the aesthetic of old photographs.
But I think that explanation is too simple, and it misses something more interesting.
The people most drawn to film photography right now are often the people who have no personal nostalgia for it. They grew up entirely digital. They’ve never lived without smartphones and social media and the ability to take a thousand photos in an afternoon without thinking about it.
For those people, film isn’t about going back to something. It’s about experiencing something genuinely different from the only way they’ve ever made images.
Digital photography is abundant. You can shoot 500 frames in a day and review every one instantly. The feedback loop is immediate and essentially infinite. There’s almost no cost — financial or cognitive — to taking a photo.
Film photography costs something. A roll of film is finite. Each frame matters. You don’t get to see what you captured until after the film is developed. That constraint changes the entire relationship with the act of making an image — and for a lot of people who have only ever known digital, that change feels like relief.
The Intentionality That Film Demands
I’ve been shooting film for decades. I also shoot digital professionally every day. And the thing I’ve always found most valuable about film — the thing I keep coming back to and trying to teach — is the quality of attention it requires.
When you have 36 exposures, you look differently. You stand in front of a scene and you actually decide whether it’s worth a frame. You pay attention to light in a way that digital photography often doesn’t demand, because in digital you can just correct it later, or shoot ten versions and pick the best one.
Film makes you be present. Not in a precious, self-conscious way — but in the way that any constraint forces you to engage more fully with what you’re doing.
I’ve watched people pick up film cameras for the first time and slow down in a way that’s immediately visible. Their breathing changes. They look longer before they shoot. They make decisions rather than capturing everything and sorting it out later.
That quality of attention produces images that feel different. Not technically better necessarily — digital can be technically superior in almost every measurable way. But different in their relationship to the moment they captured. More deliberate. More present.
What the Twin Cities Film Community Looks Like Right Now
The analog photography community in the Twin Cities is genuinely active — more active than most people outside of it realize.
There are film shooters, darkroom enthusiasts, and people who are curious about both scattered across the metro, often without knowing that others nearby share the same interest. The community tends to be informal and self-taught because formal instruction has been hard to find locally.
That’s the gap I’ve been watching for years. People who want to learn — who are curious about darkroom work specifically, about the process of developing film and making prints by hand — and no good accessible place to learn it in Saint Paul or the broader Twin Cities.
I’ve been working in a darkroom since long before digital photography existed. I understand the chemistry, the equipment, the process. I know what it feels like to watch an image emerge in a developer tray for the first time, and I know how to create the conditions for other people to experience that.
Something is coming at my Saint Paul studio this winter. If you’ve been curious about film photography — whether you’ve never touched an analog camera or you used to shoot film and want to come back to it — reach out and let me know. I’m building something and I want the people who are genuinely interested to hear about it first.
Is Film Photography Right for You?
If You’ve Never Shot Film Before
You don’t need any background in photography to start with film. In fact, starting with film before digital can build a stronger intuitive understanding of exposure, light, and composition than the other way around — because you can’t rely on instant feedback and corrections.
What you do need is curiosity and patience. Film photography rewards both.
If You’re a Digital Photographer Who Is Curious
The technical concepts you already know transfer. What changes is the relationship with the process — and that change is often the most interesting part for experienced digital shooters.
Many photographers who try film describe it as a reset. A return to something slower and more deliberate that makes them better observers even when they go back to digital.
If You Used to Shoot Film and Want to Come Back
The muscle memory comes back faster than you’d expect. What has changed is the ecosystem — where to buy film, how to find labs, what equipment is still available and what isn’t. Getting oriented to the current analog landscape is half the battle for returning film shooters, and it’s something I can help with directly.
Why the Darkroom Is the Real Thing
I want to say something specific about darkroom work, because I think it’s different from film photography in a way that’s worth naming.
Shooting film is one experience. Developing your own film and making prints in a darkroom is something else entirely.
In a darkroom, you’re working with chemistry and light and time in a completely hands-on way. The image doesn’t appear on a screen — it appears on paper, in a tray of developer, in front of you. The process is physical and slow and almost meditative.
I’ve brought people into darkrooms who had no particular interest in photography and watched them become completely absorbed. There’s something about the combination of darkness and chemistry and the particular magic of watching an image appear that gets under people’s skin in a way that’s hard to predict and almost impossible to replicate with any digital process.
If you’re in the Twin Cities and you’ve ever been curious about what a darkroom actually is and what happens inside one — stay tuned. What I’m building at my Saint Paul studio this winter is designed specifically to make that experience accessible to people who have never had access to it before.
It’s going to be worth waiting for.
If you’ve been curious about film photography — whether you’ve never touched an analog camera or you used to shoot film and want to come back to it — reach out and let me know. I’m building something at my Saint Paul studio this winter and I want the people who are genuinely interested to hear about it first.
