On my first day in my photography class, the professor brought out a slide machine to show us his work. The room that our class is held in is windowless, so as he turned off the lights we were enveloped in the kind of darkness I’d formerly supposed was reserved for death or processing film. Despite the fact that I couldn’t see my classmates, after watching slides for a while I became so engrossed in what I was seeing that I gradually lost awareness of my surroundings. It was at this point that the professor asked if any of us had used a medium format camera before.

And there I sat, hand raised in complete darkness.