karl shah-jenner wrote:
I have been in photography for about 45 years and a working professional at a university for 32 years. I have used formats from Minox to 5x7. I have disposed of a number of film cameras lately but still have 3 or 4 35mms, a 127 TLR, a 120 TLR (the first serious camera I owned, a Minolta Autocord dating to 1957, a Horizon 202, and a 5x7 view camera. The only one I currently use is the Horizon for its novel view. Oh, I do use a Nikon Action Touch when I am in the water. No digital equivalent! As others have said the reasons and occasions to use film seem to be disappearing for me.DOn writes:
Alan, pardon the over reactive moment. There may have been one suggestion that digital imagers were not photographers or I may have inferred that.
s'OK Don, I'm still having trouble believing they're human.. ;-)
Anyway, it kept the thread moving and growing. I have only recently moved into digital after a lifetime of conventional, and some unconventional, methods and processes. I have no particular ax to grind with either.
out of interest, and please don't take this for a moment as me questioning your credentials, what formats have you shot with film? If you've been a mf or lf shooter, do you miss these formats?
This has already been well addressed by others. I just point to Jerry Uelsman as an example of superb, inventive, creative person who seized digital darkroom methods because it made his creations easier and faster to do. I know that is not always a good thing but time spent and difficulty do not necessarily make an image better only more rare. That may be an economic issue rather than a photographic one.
But I am falling in love with the digital world. One can do so much there.
I've yet to find much that digi can do that couldn't be done by a skilled operator using traditional processes. Bob Carlos Clark was a master of multiple enlarger multiple image printing, eugene smith kept his practices secret though, and unsharp masking was a relatively new technique though one mastered in the darkroom before it found it's way to a computer program. desaturating and colourising were the tools of the trade for graphic artists and the photographers who chose to learn the techniques.. the list goes on.
but.
skill and much more dedication, money and time was required to master these tools and techniques
Terrific exchanges on this issue, PFers. This is what we have been lamenting as missing of late. Now if some of you will get personal and quasi insulting, it will be like old times.
But, as with all creative processes, sometimes too much freedom of choice makes the job harder rather than easier. An architecture professor of mine always said the toughest jobs would be those with the fewest set parameters. Vacillators need not apply.
true, but hey.. every day we wake we have the world ahead of us, we pick up our cameras and we make our way out the front door - what are we to photograph? ;-)
we sometimes choose to limit ourselves and that is our nature, we are creatures of habit who approach new situations cautiously, that's a simple fact of survival. Constraints, whether self imposed or existant in a social structure make life more predictable and steady and within those constraints we are free - and it also gives us walls to kick and push against, to challenge us and present us with something to seek to conquer, and if the walls NEED pushing back and we have the intestinal fortitude then we will seek to make changes. It's also very rewarding to overcome a major hurdle and succeede.
Mastering those darkroom techniques would bring on an appreciation from others and a satisfaction in ourselves, a good reward for hard effort. as you say, vacillators need not apply - it balanced nicely
a kid with photoshop, net access and a half dozen images pinched from the web has none of the limitations of a traditional film / darkroom photographer and the images can be whipped out quickly, sometimes badly sometimes good - the effort is the same though and the rewards.. well, they're off playing doom as soon as they've lost interest in the montage of madonna, brittany and dubbya.
our darkroom efforts are diminished by this sort of thing though. is it a real Faberge egg or a plastic copy? no one asks, they assume it's the plastic copy and don't bother picking it up to check.. after all, Faberge eggs are only ever found in museums :-(
k
Don
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Don Roberts * Bittersweet Productions * Iowa City, Iowa
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There are moments when everything goes well; don't be
frightened, it won't last. --- Jules Renard
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