Today my slides were finally returned from the Fuji Trucolor lab in Arizona – all 7 rolls of what I shot underwater in Dominica. The return to film felt a bit strange – from loading it in the camera, to pacing myself underwater with my limited amount of exposures, waiting for the developing, and of course, going through slide by slide with a loupe and light table. Afterall, it has been a bit more than 2 years since I have exposed my last piece of film. In my own silliness, I actually had a bit of pretrip anxiety about this. Especially because I felt my underwater photography skills would be more than rusty, I was thinking I would be a bit lost without that digital safety net of instant feedback.

While there are many aspects of shooting with film that I don’t miss, this short return brought back the whole tactile experience of it. With my loupe and a tiny little lightbox, I was like a kid in a candy store when I found shots I was pleased with. Those that didn’t make the cut were thrown in the trashcan (a physical object!) just like the good ol’ days. With vibrant color from shooting with the new Fuji Velvia Pro 100 film, instant sharpness and clarity without needing to post process anything through a computer, that slide jumped out and grabbed your attention. I held it in my hand, grinned, and said ‘wow.’ I was happy I didn’t totally blow it.

So it will take some time to now scan the best, clean the dust spots off, and file them away in their pages, but the return to film brought back some good memories of this particular process of photography, however short lived it may be.

The image in this post is of a bristleworm, sometimes called a ‘fireworm,’ due to the painful sting you will receive if you touch any of the fine bristles along its sides. There were many of them around Dominica, but finding them in a good photographic setting was difficult. This particular one happened to be crossing a rather colorful group of corals and sponges.