digital
i was talking with some friends tonight about digital photography. in preparation for my trip to Nepal, i want to get a digital camera. the thing is that i feel like a fraud using it. i love photography; that, sleeping, sex, swimming, and traveling are all that i live for. love it. eat it for breakfast. miss the darkroom. love it.
anyway, my roots of photography are firmly planted in 35mm black and white film and countless hours in the darkroom. that, to me, is true photography. i guess i'm just a purest like that. i certainly see the benefit of digital. it's definitely beneficial, financially, to know what the pictures look like instantly so you can make the necessary adjustments and give people their moneys' worth. i mean, i want a digital camera so that, as i'm flying along the Himalayan Mounts, i know what i've taken and come home with only amazing shots. i grant digital that. however, that doesn't stop me from feeling like it's a short cut to claiming photography. in any photographic situation, you have to have an artistic eye, and so maybe that's where the talent comes in. but, you're not actually taking the picture. you're setting up the shot for the camera to take the picture. the camera adjusts the focus. hell, i've seen cameras where the viewfinder looks like the inside of the Terminator's eye and all you have to do is tell the camera which section of the grid to focus on and it does everything for you. that's...pussy photography.
i guess i feel like you can't fully appreciate film/classic photography without knowing the process; for example Ansel Adams. now, when i first started learning photography, i didn't really like Ansel. i didn't get it. everyone raved about his photos and all i saw was Yosemite National Park. i didn't see what the big deal was. then i started developing my own black and white photos. now, i get it. i totally fucking get it. to look at his pictures and the grayscale...my God, it's incredible. the sheer range of his grayscale is astounding. there are no places in his shots that are too dark or too white. it's technically perfect. i couldn't appreciate him before the darkroom, because i never knew the work that went into it. it wasn't until i tried--and failed many, many times--to do it that i understood what everyone was raving at.
in any given picture you take, obviously, you have many shades and tones. some parts of the picture are pitch black and other parts are pure white. in order to equalize the photo, you have to dodge and burn the hell out of the picture. you have to apply and limit varying degrees of light to bring out every detail, but not over or underexpose the photo. Ansel shots of pine trees are incredible because you can see every little detail. depending on the sun position, the F-stop and numerous other factors, whole sides of trees could've been in complete darkness because of the shade. he manipulated the developing process to achieve a perfect picture. same with his mountains. you can see snow drifts and ridges where, you know, the sun was probably reflecting intensely off of the snow.
it's impossible to appreciate the photo without ever being in a darkroom. it's loving Hip-Hop, but not liking Black people. to really know and understand the music, you have to know its origins.
that's not to say that digital photography doesn't have its own set of learned skills. i don't know how to use photoshop. i'm certain it's fairly complicated. that, however, is not photography. that's computer graphics. once you alter the picture, in anyway, on the computer it now belongs to the world of computer technology. you didn't physically create that picture. you created the base. it's like residential foundation layers claiming they built the house. they certainly created the structure on which the house was built, but that's all they did. the aesthetic beauty of the house is not their doing.
there is a time when digital photography is art. when you've created a photo that was intended to dramatically distort reality, then you've created art. if you take a picture of a tree frog, turn it periwinkle, and give it wings, you created a different kind of art. it's not organic photography, though. it's one step away from CGI.
even if you take film photography and opt to go into digital, that's fine, but you have to have to initial knowledge and awareness. i don't think you can truly call yourself a photographer until you, at the very least, know what film developing entails. it'd be me calling myself a painter, but only using my Microsoft Paint program. until i've mixed my colors, prepped my canvas and put brush to paint, i'm not a true painter.
anyway, my roots of photography are firmly planted in 35mm black and white film and countless hours in the darkroom. that, to me, is true photography. i guess i'm just a purest like that. i certainly see the benefit of digital. it's definitely beneficial, financially, to know what the pictures look like instantly so you can make the necessary adjustments and give people their moneys' worth. i mean, i want a digital camera so that, as i'm flying along the Himalayan Mounts, i know what i've taken and come home with only amazing shots. i grant digital that. however, that doesn't stop me from feeling like it's a short cut to claiming photography. in any photographic situation, you have to have an artistic eye, and so maybe that's where the talent comes in. but, you're not actually taking the picture. you're setting up the shot for the camera to take the picture. the camera adjusts the focus. hell, i've seen cameras where the viewfinder looks like the inside of the Terminator's eye and all you have to do is tell the camera which section of the grid to focus on and it does everything for you. that's...pussy photography.
i guess i feel like you can't fully appreciate film/classic photography without knowing the process; for example Ansel Adams. now, when i first started learning photography, i didn't really like Ansel. i didn't get it. everyone raved about his photos and all i saw was Yosemite National Park. i didn't see what the big deal was. then i started developing my own black and white photos. now, i get it. i totally fucking get it. to look at his pictures and the grayscale...my God, it's incredible. the sheer range of his grayscale is astounding. there are no places in his shots that are too dark or too white. it's technically perfect. i couldn't appreciate him before the darkroom, because i never knew the work that went into it. it wasn't until i tried--and failed many, many times--to do it that i understood what everyone was raving at.
in any given picture you take, obviously, you have many shades and tones. some parts of the picture are pitch black and other parts are pure white. in order to equalize the photo, you have to dodge and burn the hell out of the picture. you have to apply and limit varying degrees of light to bring out every detail, but not over or underexpose the photo. Ansel shots of pine trees are incredible because you can see every little detail. depending on the sun position, the F-stop and numerous other factors, whole sides of trees could've been in complete darkness because of the shade. he manipulated the developing process to achieve a perfect picture. same with his mountains. you can see snow drifts and ridges where, you know, the sun was probably reflecting intensely off of the snow.
it's impossible to appreciate the photo without ever being in a darkroom. it's loving Hip-Hop, but not liking Black people. to really know and understand the music, you have to know its origins.
that's not to say that digital photography doesn't have its own set of learned skills. i don't know how to use photoshop. i'm certain it's fairly complicated. that, however, is not photography. that's computer graphics. once you alter the picture, in anyway, on the computer it now belongs to the world of computer technology. you didn't physically create that picture. you created the base. it's like residential foundation layers claiming they built the house. they certainly created the structure on which the house was built, but that's all they did. the aesthetic beauty of the house is not their doing.
there is a time when digital photography is art. when you've created a photo that was intended to dramatically distort reality, then you've created art. if you take a picture of a tree frog, turn it periwinkle, and give it wings, you created a different kind of art. it's not organic photography, though. it's one step away from CGI.
even if you take film photography and opt to go into digital, that's fine, but you have to have to initial knowledge and awareness. i don't think you can truly call yourself a photographer until you, at the very least, know what film developing entails. it'd be me calling myself a painter, but only using my Microsoft Paint program. until i've mixed my colors, prepped my canvas and put brush to paint, i'm not a true painter.
posted by badassed at
1:57 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home