Why The Bother?
It seems that most photography that I see on the web or displayed in local exhibits began as a digital image. If you see a photograph on the web it has to be digital, but some do not start that way. I see many people with digital cameras taking pictures and publishing them on a website somewhere, like Flickr, Picasa, or Facebook. The photographs that you see on this website are also digital images, but most of them came from scanned ‘analog’ slides or negatives.
Firing the shutter on a camera is just the first step. If you are a digital photographer, the images still need to be downloaded into a computer and then manipulated somehow with Photoshop or similar software. The result can be surreal dreamlike images, false colors, absurd composites, mosaics, or other fragments of the photographer’s imagination. Sometimes digital images are only cleaned up a bit. The color is adjusted or the edges sharpened. These manipulations can culminate into a work of art, but somehow I think a photograph that begins as a digital image is a derivative of photography that I would rather not explore, at least not yet.
I shoot slides or monochrome print film most of the time. Occasionally I’ll shoot color print film, but I prefer the saturated reds, blues, and yellows of chromes, also known as slide film. Chromes are predicable. As long as the film is fresh, Velvia 100 from one batch looks very much like Velvia 100 from another batch. Monochrome film on the other hand, holds a special fascination for me.
Forrest Gump could have said that monochrome photographs are like a box of chocolates. You never know just what you’ll get. A lot depends on the film and developer combinations. Some of it depends on the temperature of the developer, how the film is exposed, or the length of time that the film is in the ‘soup’. Medium format film, of the 120 or 220 types, gives better definition and finer grain than 35mm negatives can on the same emulsion, but often the characteristic grain of 35mm film contributes to the texture and quality of the resulting photograph and the statement that the photographer is trying to make.
Digital? It is very predictable. It is static. It begs to be manipulated post-production. Digital photography is a legitimate art form, but it is not what I consider authentic. I need a certain level of random variability to make photography exciting. It is one thing to get instant gratification seconds after an image is shot, but it is quite another to savor the anticipation of what I think I have captured on film compared to the photograph that is really on the negative. In one instance, I kinked and damaged a roll of 35mm Fomapan 100 because I had a hard time winding it on the processing reel when I processed it. To make matters worse, the film had doubled up on the reel and the emulsion surfaces of the film contacted each other and stuck together during development, leaving only a few printable frames. Winter Rails was on that roll. It remains one of my favorite prints.
That’s why I bother.
Firing the shutter on a camera is just the first step. If you are a digital photographer, the images still need to be downloaded into a computer and then manipulated somehow with Photoshop or similar software. The result can be surreal dreamlike images, false colors, absurd composites, mosaics, or other fragments of the photographer’s imagination. Sometimes digital images are only cleaned up a bit. The color is adjusted or the edges sharpened. These manipulations can culminate into a work of art, but somehow I think a photograph that begins as a digital image is a derivative of photography that I would rather not explore, at least not yet.
I shoot slides or monochrome print film most of the time. Occasionally I’ll shoot color print film, but I prefer the saturated reds, blues, and yellows of chromes, also known as slide film. Chromes are predicable. As long as the film is fresh, Velvia 100 from one batch looks very much like Velvia 100 from another batch. Monochrome film on the other hand, holds a special fascination for me.
Forrest Gump could have said that monochrome photographs are like a box of chocolates. You never know just what you’ll get. A lot depends on the film and developer combinations. Some of it depends on the temperature of the developer, how the film is exposed, or the length of time that the film is in the ‘soup’. Medium format film, of the 120 or 220 types, gives better definition and finer grain than 35mm negatives can on the same emulsion, but often the characteristic grain of 35mm film contributes to the texture and quality of the resulting photograph and the statement that the photographer is trying to make.
Digital? It is very predictable. It is static. It begs to be manipulated post-production. Digital photography is a legitimate art form, but it is not what I consider authentic. I need a certain level of random variability to make photography exciting. It is one thing to get instant gratification seconds after an image is shot, but it is quite another to savor the anticipation of what I think I have captured on film compared to the photograph that is really on the negative. In one instance, I kinked and damaged a roll of 35mm Fomapan 100 because I had a hard time winding it on the processing reel when I processed it. To make matters worse, the film had doubled up on the reel and the emulsion surfaces of the film contacted each other and stuck together during development, leaving only a few printable frames. Winter Rails was on that roll. It remains one of my favorite prints.
That’s why I bother.
