I have been a photographer, at least an amateur photographer, for over 20 years. That's more than half my life, and slightly longer than I have been a vegetarian -- only slightly. I am about as passionate about photography as I am about food, but I haven't written about photography in my web pages. I simply take pictures, more every year. I share them in little ways, but I'm the only one who has seen my complete output. The activity that dominates all of my non-eating, non-cooking, non-food shopping time deserves a little space here. This is that space.
Those of you who have been on the net since it was a text-based world remember the famous "Canon vs. Nikon" wars, in which the rec.photo news/discussion group raged with a battle for the superiority of one brand of mass produced camera over another. TO THIS DAY there are people within my circle of friends who describe themselves as 'Canon people,' as in "I am a Canon person."
Seriously.
My circle also includes people whose allegiance is to all things digital, and their conviction that film should die out as quickly as possible is... well, okay, it's just strange and unhealthy. But gosh, they are certainly enthusiastic about killing other media to make room for their new favorite.
This is all patently ridiculous. It doesn't matter what brand of camera you have, or whether it is film or digital: all that matters is that it is a tool suited for YOUR uses. The best brand x camera in the world with the most features is pointless if you can't get the results you want when you want them. For many purposes, cameras aren't really BETTER than other cameras: they are just better for YOU.
A famous photographer once took offense when asked what kind of camera he'd used in his work, responding that unless reporters also ask writers what kind of typewriter they used to write their novels, he wasn't answering. This seems perfectly fair. Advertising has gotten to the point where otherwise reasonable people tout their brand of tool rather than their own creative efforts for their output. (Their creativity lacks the advertising budget of the camera companies, obviously, and this comes into play.) I know people who would rather talk about their camera's functions than take a photo. Which is sad.
I have no loyalties to brands, eras, or formats - for me, photography is about PHOTOS, not about cameras for their own sake.
Digital technology isn't the only thing that's wildly popular: toy FILM cameras are gaining use in many circles. Plastic cameras with lousy optics, limited controls, and often dubious workmanship are experiencing an 'avant garde' moment. Why? In a time when some people define themselves by how expensive or professional their camera is, plastic cameras insist it isn't about the equipment.
Technology can guarantee that your fancy, automatic camera photos are properly exposed and in focus without any real effort on your part. Correct exposure and focus, being so easy and possible for everyone, can no longer be primary goals in photography. Anyone can do it - so now, YOU don't HAVE to.
Talented photographers with $25 Holgas take some better pictures than many people I know with serious, grown-up cameras. Despite the obvious defects of the camera, some Holga images on-line are downright gorgeous. Serious photo clubs are staging annual competitions to reward work in this genre. The imperfections of the crappy lens don't detract from a powerful composition as much as one would think, and can add an unusual character to already strong work. (Strong work is key: weak work on any camera is sad (and abundant).)
Cheap plastic cameras have other charms. They are affordable, providing wide economic access to photography at the introductory level. They an be subtle (or sneaky), allowing photos to be taken of people with their natural facial expressions, and can be used in places where obvious "real" cameras are discouraged. They encourage spontaneity and risk - there are so unserious that you can be confident you won't be harshly judged by your work with them, and can snap away without even bothering to put your eye to a viewfinder, if the camera even HAS a viewfinder.
I am sometimes terribly SERIOUS about photography, in the uptight sense. I have been defeating my doomed sense of perfectionism by playing with a Lomo SuperSampler (from the plastic camera geniuses at lomography.com) that I was lucky enough to receive for my birthday. The 4-eyed, time-lapse camera divides a 35mm film frame into four tall segments, and shoots 4 images a half second apart in strong daylight. Clearly a novelty camera, it lacks even a useable viewfinder (though a sybolic piece of plastic ostensibly serves that function, it is merely symbolic). Clearly, it's impossible to do any serious work with it. I have a BLAST every time I use it, and it is giving me new ideas for my so-called "Serious" work. I am eagerly preparing work to post to my web gallery devoted solely to plastic cameras at http://www.lomography.com/homes/lene2000, which show just how much fun I'm having.
For people who need to step away from their bond with a particular high-tech camera and test themselves with relatively primitive equipment, that option is readily available, and can be a useful exercise.
For those of you who care despite this introduction, my current stable of seventeen cameras includes:
Why do I own so many cameras if I don't think cameras are the important thing? There are a few reasons. Nine of these cameras were gifts from people who knew I loved photography and would use them; five of these gifts are from my dad, who has been an enthusiastic photographer himself. (After years of "serious" cameras, he did what many photographers do, and realized that composition is more important than showing off hardware: he switched to point & shoots later in life, and then to digital.) For the others, I thought I might learn something from trying different equipment and different film formats, since 15 years devoted solely to the Nikon F made me feel a bit dependent on its specific way of working. Some of the cameras are not fully functioning, have limited abilities to capture certain kinds of scenes or light, or are not rugged enough to put up with the things I do to them.
Also, my non-photographer friends insisted that my Nikon F photographs were better than theirs because of the camera alone, and I wondered if there was anything to that. It turned out that wasn't: while their high-end cameras failed to take good low-light photos fully automatic modes, if they'd known how to use them, they probably could have taken the longer exposures that I could. The problem wasn't that my manual camera wasn't hampered by an electronic brain that would mess that up, but that they didn't know how to use their cameras in certain, non-optimal situations. (Compositional issues are also beyond the camera's control.) If people paid greater attention to the strengths and weaknesses of their cameras (and peculiar characteristics of their film or CCDs), they would be better photographers, because they'd use their camera to the best of its abilities, whatever its abilities and limitations are.
There is some degree of hysteria over digital photography. Magazines are full of ads and hype about how digital will CHANGE YOUR LIFE, about the benefits of "instant" data, and about all of the magical things you can do with digital photos. Yet, most of my pals aren't wallowing in magic: they're still here on earth with the rest of us.
Digital photography is a great thing, but it isn't yet as good as film photography for ALL purposes. It is superior to film photography for SOME purposes, although for some of those purposes it's pretty close. People I know who love digital are easily offended by this concept for no good reason.
Arlene, digital is the hot new thing. We should immediately burn all of our old equipment and get with the new program. The ads say so!
Not so fast. Digital photography has come a long way since that great PopSci article I read years back, that said if we'd started with digital photography and THEN invented gelatin film emulsions, film would be considered an exponential scientific advance. But it isn't there yet.
As an example, let's discuss resolution. Any image bank or stock agency that sells images for ads has been able to take ANY film image in their bank and blow it up to the size of a billboard. Digital technology available to my economic class doesn't allow images to be blown up that large without looking ridiculous. Any lousy film photo I've shot in the last 20 years has higher resolution than ANY digital photo that I or anyone else I know has made in camera. THAT IS NOT AN ADVANCE. This puts my digital cultist friends in a corner, so they say that film standards are unreasonably high, or impractical. They think the standards should be LOWERED for the new technology. That means that digital isn't "there" yet.
That's my favorite observation. I'll put a few others in a list or two here:
Advantages of Digital Photography
Advantages of Film
Having worked extensively with film, I feel bad for people whose only exposure (ha ha) to photography is digital: there is so much cool stuff you can do with simple film materials in a low-tech way with fabulous results. And film has many charms, especially in what certain films choose to emphasize, that digital doesn't match.
I can still safely say that my 25 years of experience with the Nikon means I can get better results with it than with my 6-ish years of experience with the digital Leica. That doesn't mean the technology is bad: it just means that 25 years of experience actually MEANS something. In 17 more years, I would say that I'll probably be as good with the Leica, but it probably won't be around any more, or will be unable to communicate with the other technologies required to share images.
I currently shoot more digital images than film images. This doesn't mean much to my friends who want me to join the digital cult exclusively, but I'm not choosing my tools to please others.
I have another website, www.aegraves.com, which has some samples of my botanical, landscape, and abstract work up, plus some of my antique-technology prints. I update it whenever I feel like another set of images is ready to share.
I have images up on my favorite site for antique and exotic photographic printing processes. My images can be found at Alternativephotography.com - Elizabeth Graves (gallery).
Here at teahousehome, my personal, touristy images are on display at Galleries. This isn't fancy stuff: it's vacation photos, and little experiments that aren't yet part of larger portfolios. I don't post there often, since I've prioritized a few other projects, but more photos gradually appear, mostly of my favorite places.
I also have toy camera photos up at the lomographic society international and a photo diary of iPhone photos up at mobilelene.blogspot.com.
I took a photography sabbatical in 2004 and 2005, which allowed me to study a range of film, contemporary wet darkroom, and antiquarian photography techniques. It was an enormously educational time, and I've been able to build on it extensively. I became involved with on-line communities of photographers working in alternative photographic processes near the end of my sabbatical.
In 2006 and 2007, my photographic work (in color and alternative processes) was included in three books, and my alt process prints were shown in juried group gallery shows in New York, London and Sacramento.
In 2008, my work was included in three shows. Two were in San Francisco, and one was a glamorous event at the W Hotel's ballroom, in which I was one of five finalists, and ultimately the grand prize winner. The other was in New York City; I was chosen to participate in Soho Photo's juried alt process show
In 2009, I began to collaborate with the Getty Conservation Institute on a project; my work is now included in the Getty Collection. Soho Photo's judges selected wet collodion work I had produced on my homemade camera for inclusion in their annual alt process photo show. I also produced a small photo essay, Stanislaus: Two Walks in the Western Sierra Foothills, which is available for purchase from Blurb.
2010 is only halfway through.
In July, I self-published Under Autumn Clouds: A Stormy November in Kyoto, a book of favorite details from a return trip to Japan after a 16 year absence. This is a massive book - 158 pages - and I took a great deal of time in laying out the book, organizing it into chapters, making sure each spread contained work that was related, and organizing appendices. (Yes, appendices.) Blurb's annual photo book competition is inspiring!
In August, I have work on display at Jack Fischer Gallery at 49 Geary in San Francisco. Five ferrotypes, made in my homemade camera utilizing the wet plate collodion process, are on the wall.
What else is new? I've created some new work for juried competitions, and have also entered some work from recent years that hasn't been widely seen. I'm planning some 'constructs' to photograph - works of three dimensional art that will exist primarily to be photographed. I'm playing with Polaroid cameras and some of the newly engineered, experimental, peculiar films being produced by the Impossible Project. I'm planning another book or two, though I have no idea when the time will come from...
last updated august 2010