I miss going through two levels of packaging to get to the disposable camera-first there was the cardboard box, then there was the plastic wrapping. I miss the sound of the clicks as I wind it up again and again. I miss the excitement of going with mom to the pharmacy just so I could get the paper bag and rip it open to finally see all the pictures I took.

In my room in the house I grew up in, there was a vanity table with a big mirror. This mirror and the walls of my room were covered with fuzzy-focused pictures of my friends and I all wearing sunglasses on the beach, my sister sleeping in the car on a road trip, my brother in the Halloween costume I made for him, and the goofy faces my best friend and I were making at a camera with a lifespan only as long as the weekend retreat we were on. I did not look glamorous in most of the pictures-in fact, there were a lot of pictures of me with my eyes closed and my hair sticking up in all directions – but I kept them all on my wall.

My favorite pictures were the ones from the beach trips I used to go on with my church youth group. For the first trip during my freshman year, all the girls, and a few guys, brought disposable cameras that they picked up the day before. After the trip, we all met up at someone’s house to share the developed photos. I always printed doubles so my friends could take the ones they wanted. It was a social activity that now happens in the form of silent comments left on Facebook or MySpace.

It used to be that we got what we got. There was no checking the LCD screen the instant the picture had been taken to make sure we looked great. We couldn’t delete every shot that was less than perfect. Back then, we didn’t edit the moments of our lives.

There is no argument I could give that would result in people tossing their trendy digital cameras aside and running to the store to pick up a plastic one with only 24 chances to capture the best moments. Digital cameras don’t have film that needs to be developed, the chances to capture moments are virtually limitless, and there’s no need to buy a new one each time a camera-worthy event comes up. The digital camera, though fancier and more technologically advanced, is significantly more cost effective and easier to use.

Still, there’s a part of me that wishes people would start capturing their moments through a disposable camera again. No instant gratification – there is pleasure in anticipation and waiting for film to be developed. No deleting – if we don’t look like supermodels in every shot, that’s okay. But if a return to film cameras is not possible, the least I hope is that people will print the pictures they take with digital cameras and put them on the walls of their rooms and not on walls in cyberspace, flip through them with their hands and not click through them with a mouse, and treat each photograph like a moment that will never happen again.

Abby Shagin is a junior at Drexel University majoring in film.

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