At some point we have all had that ‘Je Ne Sai Pas’, that ‘lack of oomph’.

We’ve flowed with the creative juices along a sea of one idea after the other, and then BANG the brain is tired and there is nothing, not a sausage! What do you do!

There is some debate whether it was Ansell Adams or Henri Cartier Bresson that said ‘Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.’ I think I’ve pretty much crashed that number some time ago digitally (it maybe more in the 10’s of thousands as my hard drive hates me at the moment!), so by Adams and Bressons standard I’m going good! However I’m in my infancy with analogue photography, there is much more to come.

Recently I’ve worked a lot in digital, don’t get me wrong I love it, the versatility the ability to preview ‘in-camera’ shots before settling on a final, setting a scene and adapting, and the analogue has been the straggler. That is until I went to an Archive Photography workshop lead by Artist Tracey Affleck this week at Cofwd

Tracey is absolutely infectious, I admire her passion for analogue, sifting through bags of 8mm film that she had either got from a boot fair or e-bay, the stories that these anonymous films would tell, someones forgotten memories, and album of tomato growing from a family lost in the movement of life, a guy with a 1920’s ‘detective’ look about him being remembered, so inspiring.

I’m passionate about history and love learning about it through photographs, this workshop has reignited my interest for bringing old films and old photos back to life, telling stories (fact or fiction), remembering a time, a person who may have been forgotten, and to continue producing in analogue.

With the surge of digital photography are we becoming too blah-say with documenting life, will we forget the passion, sense of achievement, history and art of producing a photograph in analogue? From my rummage through photos at a local charity shop today – I know I won’t!