Film Log: Roll 001 | FUJIFILM QuickSnap

In April 2025, I was at a breaking point with my phone. I was getting more and more frustrated with it and how easy it was for me to fall down the doomscrolling rabbit hole. I felt like my entire life was lived on my phone—music was constantly playing in my headphones, my thumb constantly swiping from one app to the next, always comparing my art to the art I see on Instagram, constantly stimulated—all the while, Spring was quietly starting to bloom around me.

It started with a small decision: don't listen to music while commuting to work. I didn’t expect something so small to make a big impact, but it did. I was more present on my walks to the train and connected to the environment around me. I heard the birds chittering and the woodpeckers chipping, and watched as my neighborhood exploded in color. I couldn’t believe how many shades of pink there were! I was watching Spring come alive in real time, oohing and ahhing at the tulips as they made their grand entrance. And the cherry blossoms… how their petals danced in the wind as if christening us all into warmth.

When I realized how much I loved being off my phone in the mornings and not listening to music constantly, I decided to take things another step further. I picked up a FUJIFILM QuickSnap at my local CVS and would capture the rest of the month purely on film.

It was exhilarating and terrifying to take photos and not know how they were going to turn out. Watching the number of exposures increase with each shot, fully aware of how many I had left, made me more present in my surroundings and intentional with every shot. What do I want to remember of this month?

It's the little things.

It's my partner and our cat, Mochi, cuddling on the couch and the way the morning light shone through the cherry blossoms. It's the bright red tulips at the Morris Arboretum and the bunnies in West Philly. It's the ceiling windows at 30th Street Station. The first photo of the roll was from the South Street Bridge, looking toward the skyline. Perhaps that was the beginning of Philly Immersion, the inkling of coming home.

Not every shot came out great, obviously. I was hesitant to use the Flash and so lots of my indoor shots came out entirely underexposed which I guess was my first lesson in lighting but I was surprised at how good the rest came out from a tiny, plastic, disposable camera. Waiting to reach the end of the roll, then waiting for the scans to come back was a huge lesson in patience but also made the photos feel more special than if I just took them off my iPhone. There's something there...between taking the shot and never seeing it until its developed. Some kind of magic.

One disposable camera and twenty-seven chances was all it took.

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Special thanks to PhotoLounge for developing my film! <3