During her senior year at Winston Churchill High School in the Canadian province of Alberta, sophomore LSU swimmer Leah Troskot wanted to create a photo journal of her last year at home before moving to the United States for college.
Throughout her 12th grade year, Troskot used her disposable camera to capture memories of dinners, trips to the mountains with friends and moments during school. When purchasing film for the camera became expensive, she began using her father’s old film camera.
Troskot said using film in photography is such a thrill because the end result is unpredictable. She can’t see the final result until after the roll of film is developed, unlike digital cameras that allow people to take a picture, edit it, insert a filter and make a portrait exactly how they want.
“I feel like my generation is the last generation of kids to grow up with actual film pictures. Everything else is digital [now],” Troskot said. “I think that it’s just a lot more candid and genuine when you have pictures that were developed and created when we were kids.”
Troskot picked up the hobby to maintain a peaceful balance within her hectic schedule of being both a swimmer and a student. She said she wasn’t extremely talented in drawing and painting, but everything clicked when she picked up a camera.
Whether she’s taking pictures of her peers off-guard or capturing overlooked scenes like a line of birds resting on a tree branch against a heavy-gray sky, Troskot appreciates photography because it gives her a mental break from her everyday life.
A hobby unknown by the majority of her teammates, Troskot’s photography caught the eye of assistant coach Jeana Kempe, who appointed her to the LSU swimming and diving social media committee to capture and post photos to Instagram.
Troskot approaches her photography the same way she would swimming or taking a test — she expects to get out what she puts in.
“With film, that [mindset] kind of reflects my life,” Troskot said. “I take risks with my film photography, and I research about it [and] I make mistakes. Sometimes I get completely awful rolls of film that are ruined, and other times I can surprise myself and have a really good outcome.”
Troskot said even though photography through film is a dying activity, she believes the people who lived in the era in which it was popular will always take pride in the ways things were done in older times.
“I think [older] people will appreciate it most of all, especially when they see that some people are still into it and want to take the time and put the effort in taking nice pictures the old-fashioned way,” Troskot said. “There’s definitely an art to it, [because] you have to know your stuff. It takes a lot of trial and error.”