Last night, over a pot of ginger tea on the third story of my house, talking with my roommate Sam, I found myself rambling about why I like photography. At first, I couldn’t have begun to tell you why. I started listing a bunch of obvious reasons. Then something came out of my mouth that I wasn’t really expecting: “I think that when I’m taking photos, it’s some of the only time I'm purposefully silent.”

If you were to interview a swath of my close friends, they probably wouldn’t describe me as particularly quiet, patient, or detail-oriented. They would mention that I enjoy listening to loud music, chatting until late hours of the night, and trips to Bill's Beer Garden. While I might not be able to defend my lack of focus or tendency to hit an extremely high word count by the end of the day, I do think that when I’m taking photos, something changes in the way I think. There is less of everything else. It's like the feeling you get while watching a candle burn.

When I bought the camera that morning, I didn’t realize until after I left the store that they had accidentally given me money to take it, rather than charging me. Sarah and I obviously took this as a sign from the universe that the camera wanted to hang out with me. The camera is black with a smooth, curved surface that made it super approachable. It’s built with a long, thin body strap. It has a red rubber shutter button and a sizable flash. It, of course, is a film camera.

Owning a film camera and shooting on one is like continuing to pay to use your own camera… over and over again. However, the look of a photo on film has always made that price worth it. The photos that come back from a roll of film are just different from digital. Film photos have this humble quality to them. Honest, that’s how I would describe them. The frames present themselves in a very sincere way, as if they briefly capture real life the way we see and remember it. I credit much of this to the grain in a film photo. The subtle way it invites realness and mystery at the same time.

My sophomore year of college, in the basement of East Quad, Isaac Wingfield, a professor I can only describe as looking like my uncle from Seattle, showed me the ropes. He taught me everything from what an f-stop is to creating the perfect print on photo paper by hand. Isaac would’ve been an expert poker player; he rarely revealed to us what he thought. Instead, he would make a pot of tea, give us a cup, and then wait for us to talk. He would push us to form our own understanding of photography and what makes our photos compelling. The class taught me as much about myself as it did about photography.

Countless hours were spent in the darkroom that semester until deep into the night. Beneath the red glow of the safelight, I’d set my phone down on the floor with music playing. On those nights, I would develop my prints until close to 2 a.m. To my surprise, the first time I showed up past midnight, I was not alone. At least two others would be there with me on those late nights. Taking turns in a rhythm, dancing between the liquidy bins on the developing station and the mechanical enlargers. Nicholas and I would do round after round in that room, constantly walking out to check our prints. With each photo we developed, we got to see each other’s lives. I saw his friends and the way he viewed the world. He saw me learning how I viewed mine. There’s something vaguely enchanting about a darkroom, the way it makes you want to open up to whoever is there with you and stay for just a bit longer to get the perfect print that may or may not exist. The space that can be so quiet by yourself becomes a place to talk about your parents' back porch, that song you forgot about and the person it reminds you of, and the way every October I get a knot in my stomach when I smell leaves for the first time.

When I shoot events for The Michigan Daily, I find myself in an emotional state similar to being in the darkroom by myself. I don’t feel the need to fill the space with myself; I let myself become part of the setting. I think that if any of my friends saw me shooting an event for the paper, they would be surprised. I move differently, often oddly. I’m constantly checking the viewfinder, looking for the best shot, trying—as hard as I can—not to draw too much attention to myself or my lens. Sometimes, I end up having to talk to a bunch of people. These events are more chaotic and make me dizzy. But at most events, I get to remain quiet. And I like that. Often, standing in a crowd of people, my camera and I get to watch as people live—how they bicker, laugh with each other, and ache with growing pains.

My camera has never been perfect. I knew it wouldn’t be. No one who buys a camera for eight dollars has room to complain when it has a personality. You see, the shutter button (the button you take a picture with) has never really worked. My first couple of months were a learning curve. I discovered that you had to hold down intensely on the red shutter button before it would even think about taking a photo. I would jam my thumb into it so hard and intensely it would hurt. This would last for literal minutes, each time lasting a different length. Then, like a younger child conceding an argument, a little green light would flash, and finally, it would take a photo. After that, if you continued to take pictures, it would do it with ease. But taking that first photo was like starting a lawnmower that doesn’t want to start.

Looking back on photos from this past year, it made me realize just how much has happened—the awesome moments forever frozen, and the ones I’ve altogether forgotten. I often can’t think of last week, let alone a whole year. Being a student (seemingly since the beginning of time), my concept of a year has always skewed. In some ways, the “year” ends in December with the calendar; in other ways, it ends in late April or early May. For me, it ends in November when I turn a year older. There doesn’t seem, at least to me, to be a clean way to measure time right now. Every week and day feels so important. Each week seems like a chapter of a book I will forget half of by the next chapter. These photos, to me, are like that recap you need before continuing.

Each photo, alone, is great—but that’s not really why I enjoy them. Don’t get me wrong; I want them to look perfect. It’s the only aspect of my life where I’d call myself a perfectionist. Meticulously playing with the color and removing any dust spots or floaties that are too distracting in the film. However, when I actually look at the photo, the thing I like isn’t the way I edited it or arranged the shot. It’s the way I can remember exactly how I felt during that chapter. For a guy with a very small capacity for remembering, it’s like being reminded how to breathe.

Being the person behind the camera, you don’t get too many photos of yourself. However, in these pictures, I know that I’m in them. They aren’t absent of me. They are full of me. Full of each happy, sad, stupid, funny, nuanced, charming, simple, crazy, and boring memory I’ve had—remembered and forgotten. As time passes, I look at that invisible footprint of myself with kinder eyes. Each mistake, big leap, and fall is somehow just a piece of my puzzle. Sometimes, I need that reminder.

I wish I could say it happened in a more epic way. I wish I would've dropped it off the boat in Valencia or smashed it on a dance floor in Dublin. However, in the same weirdly, mysteriously normal manner in which I got it, the camera that had been by my side for exactly a year and two months moved on.

When asked why I like taking photos, I never really know exactly what to say. Not in any way that would come close to perfect. However, this past week, while looking over these pictures, I saw myself dancing in Dublin for the first time, swimming in Austin, Texas with my mom, joking around in at least a couple of cabins, falling and landing on my ass on a boat in Valencia, saying an ample amount of goodbyes—and I felt why.