I don't ever remember worrying about grain or noise when I shot film. It was what it was. I'd load the camera with Tri-X and try to do right by it. Sometimes I underexposed and it looked one way and sometimes I'd overexpose and it would look another way. But we mostly took what we got and reveled in the way the images looked.
I tried to spend as much time as I could over one summer here in Austin with a group of dancers. They were fun, beautiful and glamorous. We'd spend afternoons in a second story dance studio over what is now an endless row of music clubs on Sixth St. and the dancers would dance and I'd make images of them. Most of the negatives are lost to the shifting sands of time and bad conservation. Every now and then I'll come across another set and print them. Not once have I thought that it would have been any better if I'd been able to reach into the future and grab a noise free, digital camera to work with. A guilty confession? I like grain.
