Here’s a set of tips for everyone who shoots with a DSLR — pretend you’re shooting film. After years of shooting both film and digital, I’ve found that what makes the film so appealing isn’t the quality of the film itself, but rather the experience of shooting under the constraints the medium provides. Put another way, shooting digital gives you far too much freedom and power — and your work will suffer because of it.

Here’s how I fix things:

1) Physically disable the LCD

Without question, instant review is the biggest change to the photographic process in the last 30 years. Instant review acts as a creative wedge, furthering the cognitive distance between you, your camera and your subject. It shifts your focus from “taking a picture” to a mode of “recording / reviewing, recording / reviewing”. The act isn’t graceful and takes up so much of your attention that it, in my opinion, ruins most creative opportunities.

The review introduces “chimping” — dropping the camera down immediately after taking a picture to peep at it on a little LCD. The next time you watch your friend take a few pictures on a DSLR, notice that, after taking image or two, the camera drops down, the viewfinder lights up, they look …, .., ., a few frustrated glances, some button mashing (to zoom in on the LCD), then back up to the eye, a few more clicks, then down, over and over. No thinking, no waiting, little movement. Worst of all, when you chimp, it also takes you longer to get back to reality and enjoy what it is you’re looking at in the first place. You’re so damn focused on getting it right in the camera, that build up a good deal of ‘image axiety.’

The Fix — Cover the LCD in tape, and don’t look back. On a Nikon DSLR it’s easy; just cover the LCD protector in black electrical tape. On other cameras, tape a piece of cloth or soft fabric over the LCD. Why tape you ask? Because if it’s not physically difficult to look at the screen, you will. If you have it set to off, you’ll just turn it on every other shot and chimp away.

2) Use an absurdly small data card

That’s right — physically constrain the number of images you can take on an outing. One of the beauties of film is that 36 images is a very wholesome amount. To me, a roll of film seems to hold a “day” of photography just about perfectly. Having fewer images to play with forces you to consider each image — what are you looking at and why. You’ll find that you’ll have more varied and more interesting ‘rolls’ of digital film. It won’t be 89 images of everyone at party, but maybe 8 great ones of the best moments. Instead of dozens of shots of that one sunlit car at different angles, you might have just one great one of the car and one great one of the house behind it, with the old woman in the doorway (which you’d miss, if you were chimping). As designers, we all know that we should embrace constraints — so do it with photography too.

The Fix — Use 256 or 512MB cards. An ideal size translate to about 36-60, full-size RAW images per card. Buy as many cards as you can and treat them like rolls of film (i.e. leave images on them for a while, don’t immediately wipe). You’ve taped your LCD so don’t delete the images as you shoot, and change cards if you fill one up. Still, also work on “fitting” your shooting into a single card.

3) Don’t develop your images right away

Digital photography is insane because it pushes instant gratification both on the camera and at home, on your computer. And that’s damning as well — when you rush back to ‘see what you got,’ you don’t leave any room for suspense or surprise. You’re not acting like an artist or documentarian, but rather like a scientist (“did this experiment fail?”, etc.). Photography’s important questions are so much deeper than exposure, noise, and composition — the real deal is always the subject, and why you chose it.

This sounds a bit old fashioned, but letting your images sit for a few days (or a week) before you view them gives you a bit of creative distance from your work. You’ll look at your work in a much different way — you’ll be surprised by many images, and look at the subjects more closely, not the process that created them. It will be easier and a whole hell of a lot more fun to review, edit and print your work.

The Fix — Just wait. Hide the CF or SD card in a drawer and don’t import it for a few days. Or, better yet, drop it off at a photo store and let them make cheap 4x6 prints first. You can then dump these proofs on the floor, find the best ones and toss (or give a way the rejects). The ones you like — hang them immediately or gift them to friends. It’s far more ‘social’ than uploading 10, vaguely different shots of a ‘cool tree’ to flickr.

Recap: Film + Digital = Happiness

I need to point out that I don’t disdain digital photography. Quite the contrary — in fact, I love digital cameras. Film, it must be noted, is a royal pain in the ass; it’s expensive to buy and develop, hard to store, toxic to process, prone to failure, has wildly inconsistent image quality, narrow color latitude, and it’s hard to translate to digital (for modern printing, storing, sharing). While there is a certain je ne sais quoi to the look of film, it’s just not all that great to work with. Digital, when in shot in RAW mode, produces insanely great images, full of depth and flexibility for ‘developing’ in Photoshop.

Yet while digital cameras open the door to all kinds of healthy experimenting and feedback, they really take away many of the joys and creative constraints that 35mm photography has given us to play against for over the last 60 years. Match the creative elements of shooting film with digital capture, and you’ll find images you never could have captured on either medium.