I barely remember the images themselves. A few stand out, inevitably. The obvious ones. The frames you take twice because the subject simply is too good, even though you know you’re burning film you don’t need to burn. Others were risks. Shots taken on instinct, with no guarantee anything valuable would come out.

I learned long ago not to trust memory. Expectations are rarely met with matching results. Sometimes reality exceeds them. Sometimes it collapses under them.

Still, expectation is unavoidable. You don’t expose film without projecting something forward. You don’t develop without believing that something will surface.

Projection isn’t optimism. It’s a condition, without a cure.