Ease.

Recently I loaned Brittany an old camera of mine that had been gathering dust on a high shelf in my bedroom.
She had used the camera before (notably, to take one of my favorite photos of me ever, dancing in a field near Rockport, Texas).

I like the camera very much, but it's never been easy for me -- rather, it does not bring me ease.
Ease is not necessary, but ease can allow you a deeper creativity.

When my friends put down their photography skills (and many of them do this -- the better they are, the more frequently they do it), I always think (to myself, often aloud to them) that they need to find a new camera. If you grow tired of pastels but only use pastels, you're going to be less happy with your output. The same goes for cameras. A day's switch in negative size or film-to-digital format or manual to automatic or metal to plastic can change your mind considerably.

All this to say, this camera fits Brittany's hands and mind. It brings her ease.
From the moment she held it, it held her in return.
I've let a lot of people shoot on this camera, but she's the first one to make things with it.

The right camera just Fits.

It shoots these beautiful, large negatives (the largest format camera I own currently), but better than that, its mechanized noises are multi-syllabic, monumentally metallic and akin to opening a window in a windstorm.

She came over after processing her first roll of film, and we pieced together my crappy film scanner.
After a series of mistakes, everything began working perfectly (better than I remember).
Her photos -- mostly of hunky friends (yep, I wrote hunky) -- are truly lovely and you should see them.

Today I went to her blog and saw that she had posted a photo of her.
When we had scanned this particular negative, I thought it was her self-portrait.
But when I read her caption under the photo just now, I realized she was right -- I had shot that photo!
In fact, I can see the white outline of light that is, of course, my house.

And  now, as I write this, I remember making this image.
We thought the camera was out of film, and instead of rewinding the film, I composed a quick frame and released the shutter.

To our surprise, there was another shot:

It's funny how language affects memory.
Had I not written this to you, Dear Internet, the reality would have never existed for me.