Me And My Kodak Against The Clock

Me And My Kodak Against The Clock

Written by Norah Lesperance

Photographed by Isabelle Galgano

“It’s going to go by really fast.”

During my first semester of college, I heard this phrase (and several variations of it) from everyone. Peers, mentors, professors, and anyone older than me had something to say along the lines of, “You’ll blink and miss it.” I was told to be present in each moment, journal about everything, and take a million pictures. I wish I had listened.

The true gut-twisting gravity of this warning about how quickly time passes didn’t hit me until my flight home in December. Tears formed in my eyes while I stared down from my window seat as the Massachusetts coastline became Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and, eventually, Maryland—a home that I wasn’t quite ready to go back to. I tried scrolling through my photos from the semester, but they didn’t quite encapsulate everything I had been through and learned. So much was missing. My moment of wistful reflection became numbing fear.

This unwavering sense of dread sparked a need to start capturing everything. Sure, there’s virtue in letting things live in your memories, but I was freaking out about time passing and developing an increased sense of sentimentality in the process. So, this past Christmas, the only gift I wanted was a digital camera. Not a nice, professional camera—I wouldn’t know what to do with it. No, the simplest point-and-shoot, please. When I explained this to my dad, he was dumbfounded by the idea that I’d rather capture my life in grainy flash photos than use my higher-quality iPhone camera. Still, he did his research, and on Christmas morning, I became the mother of a maroon Kodak Pixpro FZ55. The pictures blur slightly at the edges. The focus is mediocre at best. It emits a stupid jingle when I turn it on. In short, it’s perfect.

But, honestly, my dad was on to something. Why did I feel the need to own another piece of technology? It’s not rational, and there’s no doubt that the trend cycle got to me. TikToks along the lines of “POV: you’re the ‘digital camera friend’ racing to upload all of the pictures after the function” consistently go viral. A few of my friends own and cherish a “digicam” and have Instagram accounts dedicated to these photos. But I think there’s something more behind this digital camera renaissance: a desire to disconnect.

Mobile phones are exhausting. Well, social media is exhausting, and it’s difficult to have a phone and avoid social media entirely. I’m well aware that I spend too much time on my phone, and I’d love to take a break from Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, all of it—but it feels impossible. Sometimes, I don’t want to look at the screen anymore, but I also don’t think I could live without it. 

Using older technology creates the opportunity to exist in a middle ground. Think of owning a record player in the digital age with almost universal streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music available on our phones. What’s the point of collecting physical copies of your favorite albums? I don’t have a record player, but my friends who do say that it feels authentic. It feels real. It’s tangible. It has absolutely nothing to do with the phone in your pocket. 

This is exactly how I see my digital camera. When I was growing up, my grandfather owned a digital camera, and it’s been passed to me. It’s unusable now, but the contents of his SD card tell a powerful story. He eventually bought a mobile phone but still chose to preserve countless moments using old tech. There are pictures of me and my cousins as little kids, my grandmother napping on her couch, and mountains in Wyoming from a trip many years ago. 

Today’s college students grew up just before the age of “iPad kids,” and many of us remember older technology with fondness and nostalgia. Using my digital camera brings me back to a time of childlike innocence and joy. There’s less pressure to get the perfect photo; I care more about the moment of yelling “squish in closer” at a giggly group of friends. The Kodak pictures exude so much life behind their blur.

I could be wrong. There’s absolutely something hypocritical about my theory that a digital camera severs us from our phones: plenty of us turn around and post the best of our digicam pictures on Instagram for everyone to see anyway—so much for disconnecting. But, at least for me, there’s room for balance. Plenty of moments remain unseen and will live on my SD card until the end of time. My Kodak holds heinous selfies of my roommate and me, captured as we fought brutal Boston winds to pick up dessert on my 19th birthday. It holds mirror photos from the Paramount studios, taken after late nights of improvisation and choreography sessions. It holds a painfully blurry picture of a soft pretzel that my friend bought when we went to the women’s hockey Beanpot championship game at TD Garden. These are for me to look back on when I go home again in May, working through my shock at how my first year of college flew by faster than the planes I travel back and forth in.

I know that carrying my Kodak around won’t make time any slower, but it has helped me focus on staying grounded and present in each moment. The hour hand on my clock seems to race against itself, so what else can I do? You don’t need a digital camera to build these skills by any means, but it’s worth hopping on eBay to browse some options. Or, brave the judgemental questions and ask your family if anyone has an old camera. You never know what you’ll capture, and some point-and-shoot photos may just ease the panic.