He gave it to me without explanation, ceremony, or advice. Just a camera, a 50mm lens, and the quiet confidence of a man who assumed I would work the rest out on my own. It had no modes, no batteries, and no opinions. If you got it wrong, it didn’t attempt to soften the blow.

I loved it.

Which is why, eventually, I sold it.

This is usually the point where the therapist looks up.

It was explained to me — kindly, but firmly — that photography had moved on.

Manual focus was charming but inefficient. Mechanical cameras were nostalgic but limiting. Serious photographers, I was told — the sort who seemed busy and mildly disappointed — were using Nikon or Canon.

So I bought a Nikon.

It was an autofocus film camera. It whirred. It beeped. It confirmed things. The camera now helped me. It made decisions, which felt like progress. I worried less about whether I’d done it correctly, because the camera seemed very confident that I had.

Then, a few years later, Popular Photography explained — with charts — that digital was the future.

Not a future.
The future.

Film, it said, would survive only as a niche.

This felt authoritative, mainly because it was printed.

So I did the sensible thing.

I sold everything again.

The therapist writes something down.

My first digital Nikon was miraculous.

Instant feedback. No waiting. No lab. No mystery. I could see my mistakes immediately, which saved time and also removed hope.

I photographed everything.

Street corners.
Doorways.
Coffee cups.
Other people photographing coffee cups.

My hit rate improved dramatically.
My interest did not.

Then Canon happened.

Canon, it turned out, had better colour science.

This was not a phrase I had previously used, but I began using it immediately.

Nikon colours were apparently “cool”. Canon colours were “natural”. People spoke about skin tones in the same way people speak when they want to sound finished with the conversation.

Professionals were switching again.

So I sold everything again and bought a Canon.

The colours were lovely. Warm. Reassuring.

I still didn’t know what I wanted to photograph.

By this point, photography had become my hobby.

Which meant I photographed around the idea of photography.

Textures.
Light.
Decay.
Anything that looked intentional enough to justify owning the equipment.

I owned bags, straps, filters, and extremely specific opinions.
I was always one lens away from being complete — which was unfortunate, because completion kept moving.

Just one more.
Something slightly wider, slightly faster, or slightly more obscure — in case I missed the photograph.

This photograph never arrived, but I remained prepared.

At some point, I became the family photographer.

I was asked to photograph my cousin’s wedding because I was cheap — by which they meant free — and owned a “decent camera”. I also became the unofficial family portrait archivist, documenting birthdays, Christmases, and gatherings that would later be described as “lovely” without anyone being able to remember why.

I always wanted to become a professional photographer.

But I couldn’t bring myself to photograph weddings — the smiling, the posing, the pretending everything was fine — or commercial work that required enthusiasm on demand.

Which meant I needed a real job.

Or I would be penniless, eating beans on toast, explaining to people that I was “between projects”.

The therapist nods once. Possibly by accident.

By then, I was bored of digital.

Not bored in an angry way — bored in a flat, colourless way. My photographs looked like everyone else’s. Technically fine. Emotionally absent.

I stopped photographing my family altogether.

The only photos I took were quick snaps on my phone, usually of things I didn’t care about.

The camera had become something to manage rather than use.

The therapist underlines something.

Then film came back.

Not film as in cheap and cheerful — film as in authentic. Film as in slowing down. Film as in rediscovering the craft.

I was told digital had taught me bad habits.

Film would fix this.

Which was fortunate, because I was clearly broken.

So I bought a film camera again.

Then someone explained that 35mm was limiting.

So I bought a 645.

The negative was bigger. The results were better. Until I learned that real medium format was 6×7, at which point the 645 began to feel morally questionable.

So I bought a 6×7.

It was enormous. Heavy. Sincere. Carrying it made strangers assume I knew what I was doing, which was helpful.

Later, when I decided to focus more on landscapes, someone said — very calmly —
“At that point, you might as well shoot large format.”

Which seemed reasonable at the time.

The therapist stops writing.

Eventually, someone explained that if I truly cared about film — really cared — there was only one answer.

Leica.

Everything else was compromise, rehearsal, or denial.

So I sold everything. Again.
And bought a Leica with a 50mm, channelling my inner Cartier-Bresson.

It was flawless.

So flawless, in fact, that I barely used it.

I worried about scratching it.
I worried about being mugged.
I worried about the sort of person who might notice it.

When I did use it, I worried whether I was using it correctly — ethically, spiritually, historically.

People assured me this anxiety was part of the experience, which suggested the experience was not for me.

I believed them until I sold it.

What took me far too long to understand was this:

The problem was never the cameras.

I kept thinking it was. Every time something felt flat or pointless, I assumed I needed sharper lenses, better colour, more resolution, a different system. Something external. Something purchasable.

What I didn’t have was a subject.

No project.
No reason to return.
No obligation to stay with something once the novelty wore off.

I wasn’t photographing towards anything. I was photographing to justify owning the equipment.

Once I finally found something I cared about enough to keep coming back to, everything changed — quietly, and without drama.

Photography stopped being about shooting everything and became about staying. About letting boredom arrive and not mistaking it for failure. About working something until it pushed back.

That’s when the gear stopped mattering.

Specs became background noise.
Forums became unreadable.
New camera releases felt theoretical.

I didn’t want features.
I didn’t want reassurance.

I wanted fewer decisions.

So I stripped everything back.

Not as a statement.
Not as a philosophy.

Just as a way of getting out of my own way.

After decades of upgrades, lateral moves, and perfectly reasonable justifications, I ended up exactly where I began.

An OM-1.

Mechanical.
Unimpressed.
Still uninterested in my opinions.

It didn’t make me more creative.
It just stopped me blaming the wrong thing.

The therapist closes their notebook.

“So,” they say, “are you cured?”

I think about this.

“I don’t know,” I say.
“But I’ve stopped confusing my next gear fix with progress.”

They nod, as if this is something people say a lot.

“And how many lenses do you have now?”

“Three,” I say.
“A wide. A normal. A telephoto.”

They wait.

“There are others,” I add.
“But I’ve learned they don’t arrive with answers.”

They write something down.

Outside, I finally take the photograph.

One frame.

There’s nothing to adjust, nothing to consider, nothing trying to help me.

I lower the OM-1 and feel — briefly — that I’ve reached the end of the decision-making.

I wind on.

That sound reminds me that I don’t need another camera.
Or another lens.

Just a reason to come back.

The post Notes from a Photography Therapy Session (Apparently) appeared first on Zuikography.

Film has always been more than a medium – it’s a form of proof. Proof that moments existed before the world moved on, that light once fell across someone I loved, that I was there to see it. Shooting film slows everything down; it gives weight to time. You choose a moment and trust it, knowing you won’t see the result until much later.

In that delay, something sacred happens. The act becomes about faith – faith in the moment, in the light, in what your heart recognised before your mind had time to intervene.

That’s what this piece is. Not a poem, really – more a credo. A reminder to myself of why I still press the shutter.

By the Light I Left Behind
by David Priestley

I photograph
because memory fades –
but light remembers.

Film is my proof:
that we were here,
that we lived,
that we loved,
that we belonged
to days no one else noticed.

Each press of the shutter says:
this mattered.

I don’t shoot for now.
I shoot for later –
for the slow years,
when my hands are heavier,
and the world moves on without me.

I shoot for the silence of the darkroom,
where one day I’ll stand,
old and unhurried,
watching the past bloom again
in a shallow tray of developer.

Each frame holds a promise:
that when my step falters,
I will hold proof in my hands –
faces,
streets,
weathered walls,
light falling on someone I loved –

etched in grain,
pressed in silver,
alive in the print.

And I
will find my way
back
by the light
I left behind.

Written as a quiet reminder: that light is how we remember, and why I still pick up the camera.

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