Delayed Gratification.
Yes it sounds sick, almost pornographic, but this is something I actually kind of like about it, love about it. I’m a very impatient person, waiting patiently is not my strongest skill. Film forces me to take it slow, at a minimum I have to wait an hour after shooting to see what I got. To see if my eye matches my skill, to see if the mood I was feeling at the time translated the right way onto those tiny silver crystals.
You wait to develop. You wait to print. You wait while you expose your paper in the darkroom, you sit patiently and count the seconds while its in the developer, forming an image before your very eyes, the stop, the fix, while it washes. Its a giant waiting game. But the results are so fantastic it makes all the waiting TOTALLY worth it. I love the feeling I get when I realize I captured EXACTLY what I set out to capture, its one of those gut feelings you can’t really explain, but you just know it when you have it.
I don’t wait for many things, but I will wait ever so patiently when it comes to film. :)