ambivalence
I started taking pictures probably around middle or high school. I fell in love with photography unexpectedly in high school for sure, when I took a class for the pottery and ended up spending all my time in the black & white darkroom. I shot film, color and eventually spent a good chunk of change to buy a Canon 20D, which I still own and use. I've gotten pretty decent at the basics of RAW editing and image processing in Photoshop, nothing fancy shmancy, and I know that I only know the very surface. There are a lot of things that I like about digital photography, not the least the fact that I can see what I shoot immediately and shoot an almost infinite amount of photos without breaking the bank, or even denting it really.
But I admit, I have to admit.... I've always had a strong ambivalent thread running deep down my spine about digital photography. I think after working in a commercial photo lab where I spent my day in the darkroom, where I knew every inch of my enlarger by feel in the pitch black, looking at negatives, touching the paper, feeling it come out of the processor warm from the heat, scanning negatives and making contact sheets, looking at slides, just being around images and photos and their tangibility, I'm spoiled. From the moment I wound the film onto my manual Canon A-1, firing off the first two or three "trash" shots, each photo I took I was a part of the process except for the actual film development. I took the photo, I made the contact sheet, I chose the negative and I printed the print. At the end of the process I held in my hand a tangible print.
Maybe the steps aren't so different from digital photography, but I feel something different. I had to choose what film speed I used depending on what I was photographing. I discovered that if I bought the professional line of Fujifilm, my photos looked a lot better. And using the Delta 3200 b&w film for indoor or night photography gave me beautiful film noir-ish black and white grain. There is nothing beautiful or aesthetic in any degree about digital noise. And I have to admit as well, I am in love with the look of color prints. I think maybe I am too used to their smoothness to be attracted to any inkjet print, no matter how high the dpi.
Some people love the sound of vinyl, the analog sound. They mourn the digital revolution of sound. I don't mourn the digital revolution of the image, because film is still here (and film itself is the newcomer to wetplate and other photographic processes). But I realized recently that photography is what I am passionate about. I will always love the look of the analog photo. I can almost always tell if a photo was taken on film or digital; they see the world differently, and although neither is more right or wrong than the other, I do love one more.
But I admit, I have to admit.... I've always had a strong ambivalent thread running deep down my spine about digital photography. I think after working in a commercial photo lab where I spent my day in the darkroom, where I knew every inch of my enlarger by feel in the pitch black, looking at negatives, touching the paper, feeling it come out of the processor warm from the heat, scanning negatives and making contact sheets, looking at slides, just being around images and photos and their tangibility, I'm spoiled. From the moment I wound the film onto my manual Canon A-1, firing off the first two or three "trash" shots, each photo I took I was a part of the process except for the actual film development. I took the photo, I made the contact sheet, I chose the negative and I printed the print. At the end of the process I held in my hand a tangible print.
Maybe the steps aren't so different from digital photography, but I feel something different. I had to choose what film speed I used depending on what I was photographing. I discovered that if I bought the professional line of Fujifilm, my photos looked a lot better. And using the Delta 3200 b&w film for indoor or night photography gave me beautiful film noir-ish black and white grain. There is nothing beautiful or aesthetic in any degree about digital noise. And I have to admit as well, I am in love with the look of color prints. I think maybe I am too used to their smoothness to be attracted to any inkjet print, no matter how high the dpi.
Some people love the sound of vinyl, the analog sound. They mourn the digital revolution of sound. I don't mourn the digital revolution of the image, because film is still here (and film itself is the newcomer to wetplate and other photographic processes). But I realized recently that photography is what I am passionate about. I will always love the look of the analog photo. I can almost always tell if a photo was taken on film or digital; they see the world differently, and although neither is more right or wrong than the other, I do love one more.
