The Digital Revolution

I have the new photo album started, and it is bringing up some interesting observations...

The advent of the digital revolution has really changed my views on photographic imaging! I would never have started a project where I just photographed things that popped into my view during the day. It is as if the entire process of film developing and printing was somehow "sacred", and only "worthy" images were meant to be recorded in such a fashion, especially if you used an "elite" camera system such as the Hasselblad! In some ways, film was holding me back, making me only shoot when "there was something to say", even though it was I all along that was attaching value to the subject in question, making it have a value or be of no value, as I saw fit.

Make no mistake... I do not feel film is somehow inherently elitist -- It is we that make it so. I still see great advantages to the film process... it is still able to capture far greater contrast ranges than does digital (at least in the black and white imaging that I am used to), and there is just something about creating an image in the darkroom that I feel sadly missing in my digital work on the computer. Although I am able to produce far more than when I used a darkroom, and I even feel some of my images are far more coherent and well thought out, I also miss the "feel" of the paper, the smell of the chemistry, the glow of the enlarger light in a safelit room.

I have also become willing to shoot in color, something that I avoided in the past. I have never felt charged with the energy I feel (when shooting in black and white), and the addition of color far too greatly subdues the form, shape, and tone of an image, making these powerful statements subservient to the color spectrum. Yet, somehow, digital seems to lend itself to capturing the moment, and that moment seems to be in color, at least for now.