Why I still shoot film in a very digital job

I spend my working days optimising for speed — faster builds, faster queries, faster feedback. So people are often surprised that my camera is the slowest tool I own.

A roll of film gives you thirty-six frames. You can’t chimp the screen, can’t machine-gun the shutter, can’t fix it later. Each frame costs something, so each frame gets a moment of thought. That constraint is the whole point.

Slowness as attention

Photography, for me, isn’t really about the photographs. It’s a reason to look properly — to notice the light on a wall I’d have walked past, to wait for the one second the street arranges itself. The pictures are a by-product of paying attention.

It turns out the same muscle helps at work. The best engineering decisions I’ve made came from slowing down enough to ask what problem I was actually solving.

Thirty-six frames. Choose them well.