“If you don’t take pictures, people forget everything.”

When I first started taking film photos, I had no idea what I was doing. I would change my settings to numbers that I liked (f/2.8, 1/1000) and hope that an image would turn out. I assumed there was some sort of magic or luck involved in a good exposure. While it may not be true on the exposure side of things, in some sense, there is magic in photography. The glaring reality of freezing a moment in time is that it can never come back. You will never be as young as you are in your last photograph. This idea is something that I carry with me to every shoot, and I try to push this idea on people who are wary of having their likeness captured. The point of a photograph is almost always for later, not for now.

I always tell people, 'You’ll thank me in twenty years.'

Of course, I haven’t always been this way. Back before I thought like this, I would just take cameras with me almost everywhere to see if I could get an exposure to magically turn out. In the early days of my photography journey, I was developing my color film at home in my kitchen sink. This process was extremely crude, and the scans of these images reflect that. My chemicals were often too hot, too cold, or too old. I would have blown-out highlights, blank rolls (likely because they weren’t actually shot), or just generally bad photographs. Still, I took photos everywhere I went.

Me developing film at my home in my sink, taken by Parker Bolin, developed and scanned by me at home.

One of the first film cameras I worked with was the Canon T90. Known as 'The Tank' in Japan, the T90 was a professional SLR that I had no idea how to use. My dad gave it to me for Christmas around 2017 or 2018. Having a camera that you can grow into is better than having one that limits you, but in my opinion, the best camera is the one that you’re using. Even an amateur can make a brilliant image. That’s what this story is about.

The Canon T90 aka "The Tank"

Around the time I was getting into photography, I had a group of friends who started something called 'SunDIY.' One Sunday a month, we would get together and hand out donated clothes and food to people in need down at the library in Louisville, Kentucky. These events were a really good way to feel like we were actually making some difference in our community. Another name for it was 'CommuniDIY.' We were all about getting out there and actually doing something ourselves, not just talking about it.

SunDIY, 2019. Shot, developed, and scanned at home by me.

Before these events, we would get together at a house on St. Catherine’s to get everything organized. We would make food, hang out, and get a general idea of what we were going to do that day. Sometimes we’d just get together there and come up with ideas, or we’d just hang out and chit-chat. During one of these meetings, I noticed a man sitting on his porch across the street with his dog. For whatever reason, I decided to approach him and ask if I could take his photo. Any photographer knows the fear of doing this, but, as I said, something drew me over there, and I did it anyway. He obliged, and the image was taken.

I didn’t think much of it then. I went to the meeting, shot some horribly underexposed photos, and went home. Around this same time, I discovered a local film lab located inside a business called The Print Refinery. I took this black-and-white roll up there and dropped it off to be developed. This was one of the only images on the roll that turned out, and I was pleased with it. As a gift, I decided to print this image and drop it in the man’s mailbox so he could have it.

Fast forward to 2020. A pandemic caused everything to shut down and everyone to be stuck at home. I doubt anyone alive these days will forget that year and the isolation it brought. During this emotionally challenging time, I was trying my best to engage with people through the internet with my photographs. I had fortunately been hired by the film lab I previously mentioned, and I was deep into learning about exposure and film photography. My manager, Christine Howard, is really the one who would push me to experiment and 'check my settings' whenever I had some badly exposed pictures. One day during the lockdown, I decided to share the image above of the man and his dog, just because I loved the image. Something about it is classic and almost timeless, aside from the Styrofoam cup on the stairs. It could have been shot 30 years ago or yesterday.

A friend who saw this image commented on the Instagram post and said she knew the man, Steve. He was a family friend, and they had recently buried the dog, Jack, in their front yard. I messaged her and discovered that Steve didn’t have many good photos of the dog, so he was thankful to have this particular photo.

I was emotionally body slammed. I cried on and off all day. Perhaps it was partially due to the stress of the time and the isolation I had been experiencing, but I like to think that there was magic in this moment. The fraction of a second that this photograph froze, the random interaction of a novice photographer and a stranger, the transience of life—it all came crashing down on me, and I truly learned what the importance of photography is. Even as I type this 5 years later, my eyes gloss over. Everything in the universe lined up for me to give this image to this man.

Although almost everything was shut down during that time, I would occasionally still go into the lab to do some work with Christine. That day, I came to her and told her the story of the man and his dog and how deeply it impacted me. As we were walking out, she said something to me that I’ll never forget.

'If you don’t take pictures, people forget everything.'

I live and will die by this quote. I encourage everyone: take that picture. Even if it feels awkward. Even if your friends think you are annoying. Even if it’s going to cost you money. Just do it. You don’t know the power that you have with photographs.

You can control time.