The Dark Room

The Legacy Lives on

2012-02-13T18:04:00.000-08:00

Today I just read that there is some good news for Kodak Film fans. Turns out, they will discontinue making digital cameras and continue to make films and papers. There was some fear, when they filed for chapter 11, that the company would reorganize and discontinue film production since it is a dying medium. However, I think it's wise of them to keep film around because it's better, and it is a steady niche market. Good for them.

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2145203/kodak-phases-digital-businesses-film-alive

There and Back Again

2011-04-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

Some might consider this another film vs. digital post, just like the thousands out there on the web. But don't worry; I won't bore you with magnifications of terrible photographs showing the resolutions of both mediums and arguments about megapixels. Although I confess, I've read many of those articles and have been very interested in them. I just want to tell my story of why I've come back to film.

When I was a boy my family would take yearly vacations. Sometimes it was camping... okay, mostly it was camping - or at least there was camping mixed in with the non-camping. Doesn't really matter, I suppose. But some of my fondest memories are of taking pictures with my little flashless 110 film point and shoot camera. I didn't know a lick about the technical aspects of photography at the time, but I always made an effort to compose my shots pleasurably, and I always thought it was possible to end up with a masterpiece as well. Waterfalls, rope bridges, big cities, underground passages: these were a few of the subjects I can recall, and of course, family. It was always exciting to get my photos back from the lab. We would usually look at the photos together. It was nice.

Later on, the miracle of Polaroid instant film was introduced to me, and for a while, it was heaven. Mostly, it was the process that was amazing. The wonder of instant gratification was like a sweet nectar. But all the sugar usually just results in an insulin spike followed by drowsiness. In other words, Polaroids were a novelty, and their wonder and novelty quickly wore away when I realized that my pictures were mostly junk, and to top it off, they were costing me more than one dollar per click.

Eventually, I stopped taking pictures, for the most part. Later on, when I was 20, I picked it up again. Once again, my camera was pretty junky, and I didn't really understand exposure or anything, for that matter. So naturally, my pictures lacked proper exposure and focus much of the time. Then I got a digital camera. The quality seemed better. The instant gratification was again at my fingertips... but I had lost something. Eventually, there was a weatherproof Canon sitting there in the junk pile of the thrift store. How cool was that?! Weatherproof! I could take pictures in a hurricane! What I didn't expect was the quality...

And oh what quality it was! I could see the peach fuzz on faces, the details of leaves and grass. The colors were better than I'd ever seen in my own pictures. And all this was from a thrift store camera.

Granted, I have fond memories of taking digital photos, but for artistic purposes, film has been the most enjoyable for me. There is something about the silence and the contemplative nature of the process that appeals to me. With film, you stay in the present, rather than dwelling on the lcd screen. Film is a gamble sometimes, but also requires more effort. The reward is much more satisfying.

Film is simple and understandable. My best photographic experiences are fully manual. I can see in my mind what's happening in the camera, and what is happening with the light. There's no filter; it's the ultimate RAW. Just you and the subject. No computers. No screens. Just the here and now.

Something funny about photography is this: the quality always gets worse. Now, I wouldn't say that is the case in the artistic sense - that's open for discussion - but in the quality of what is recorded of the image. Daguerreotypes are considered to be one of the most beautiful forms of photography, but the process is somewhat limiting. Consequently, faster and more convenient processes were developed: tintypes, glass plates, and finally film. But the larger formats lost out to 35mm, once again, for convenience's sake. This isn't inherently evil, per se, but each step has changed the art form.

The image has been cheapened, especially with digital photography. Napoleon Hill, in his book Think and Grow Rich, explained that things that are readily available soon become worthless. Digital pictures, because they're seemingly free and plentiful, have made the image less than precious. Now we shoot shoot shoot a million times, then throw away five hundred thousand of what we shoot. I've read the complains of professional photographers saying that the business has changed because photographers themselves place too little value on their own images and labor. Maybe it's good to slow down sometimes.

The picture at the start of this post was taken with a Kodak 3A Model B4 (the one on the right). It was a process. The negative is something like 4x5 inches in size, so any rolls of film they make for it are specialty cut films that cost a fortune. So a cut piece of photo paper was used instead. It was loaded in the dark, and then I carefully selected a subject... me. The focus was guesswork, and the exposure was too. So there I am tripping th e shutter with a stick. The results were very satisfying. A lens from 100 years ago made a picture!

Film has soul. It is direct. It is reality. No matter what you do to the print, the negative says what was really there. Digital begets laziness, which is why I scanned film for my digital photography coursework. My digital pictures were too easy to do an hour before class. I needed something that took time and effort, or else I was never satisfied. Film is capturing the light on something material. It's magic to me, and even if digital looks "better" or "cleaner", it doesn't matter. They'll always try to fake grain, but I don't have to. I use the real thing.

So I like photography. I wish I didn't feel so passionately about the medium because i'm somewhat of an obsessive person. But digital photography has brought us all the terrible things I mentioned two posts ago. It's made photography fake. It's taken the truth out of the art while at the same time feeding the spontaneous. I think of photography as capturing the art of reality. But digital is not trustworthy. It is too often altered and oozing with effects and filters.

Digital: been there, done that. And I still prefer the old ways. I've been there and back again. This probably isn't a very convincing article, but that doesn't matter because people think what they think until they experience something for themselves.

First to Latest

2008-12-17T23:40:00.000-08:00

I attended my photo class again and for the last time this year. It was a better experience for me, but that may only be due to the fact that I completely forgot that we were meeting and ended up arriving an hour and a half late...

The pictures that I displayed were of an abandoned building over in Sycamore Grove here in Livermore. The teacher said that they were probably my strongest set this whole semester. I found that kind of funny, since They were the set that I spent the least effort on. But that is the way photography works sometimes.

In the end I didn't want to leave. It wasn't so much the class itself. Maybe I was just in a good mood. But I'll miss the lab, the smell of chemicals, the thrill of a print developing before my eyes. I think I've taken like four photo classes by now. It's been a while since it all began. So I think I'll post my first and last prints done in the lab. The first is from a black and white negative. I was so excited when I made it. The mystery of the creation of a photograph became a tamable force, over which I had power. The last is from a color negative. It took a little creativity to make it work, but I got a pleasurable tonal range out of it. The road goes ever on and on... Enjoy.

Just Me Passing Judgement

2008-11-21T20:34:00.000-08:00

I recently attended one of my photography course's meetings and I came away feeling quite dreadful. I didn't go in that way, and the change that came over me has me questioning whether I want to continue the hobby in a formal college course. I don't think that an art is anything worthwhile if it just feeds negative emotions. Art is meant to please, and to enlighten. It is of no good if it forces us to dwell on all the terrible things in life. Despair is far to common already, and we don't need to foster it anymore than we already do.

Pretentious and melodrama are words that come to mind. So much of photography has been lost, I think. Whereas once the photographer sought to capture the reality before his lens, now so many already have in their mind a preconception of what they want to capture. So rather than capturing truth, they veil the truth in order to create a false reality. I personally think it's a revolting form of photography. It is unoriginal garbage. It is otherwise cheerful people captured with somber, long faces, their profiles silhouetted against a dramatic back lighting. It is death, hell, and the grave associated with the creations of God. It is drama created from the nothingness. It is the stare of sin that wants acceptance. It is wretchedness portrayed as innocence. It is counterfeit emotion and reality. It is illegitimate photography that I think of - born of a spoiled generation that seeks the weight and purpose of a struggling past that only existed before its time. It's pornography called art. It is photography that is not really photography.

Therefore, much of photography today is useless because it offers nothing of truth to the viewer. Without truth there is nothing on which to base productive action. Compounding this problem is the worthlessness of the image. The "digital revolution" has created an environment where 90% of images are thrown away. We have forgotten what a miracle the image is. We've forgotten the labor involved in it's creation. Now it is cheap and easy to create an image, and whatever is cheap and easy tends to be valued very little. This also makes for an environment where there are billions of images, and millions of people practising the "art" of photography. With so many pictures, what has not been done? Whenever excellence emerges, it is overlooked because it can likely be found from ten thousand other sources. Therefore, truth is disregarded. In the scramble for originality, people all rush to the same well. But the well is full of polluted water that will not quench thirst. In the end, we find the junk that saturates the art form and fills the soul with discontent and despair.

All of that is what I found in my class the other night, and it all made me depressed. Thankfully, there were a few people who's photography did not reflect some deep emotional issue. I like to think that mine fell into that group. I decided to display some colorful landscapes to break up some of the gloom. They didn't get much of a reaction, but at least they were the truth: nothing pretentious; no melodrama.

From Behind the Iron Curtain: The Fed 2

2008-11-21T20:30:00.000-08:00

This is from my test roll that I ran through my Fed 2. The rangefinder is hopelessly lost, so I had to estimate the distance. Everything turned out better than I was expecting on the roll.