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 have been terribly SERIOUS about photography lately, in the uptight sense. I have been defeating my doomed sense of perfectionism by playing with a Lomo SuperSampler 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 www.lomohomes.com/lene2000, which show just how much fun I'm having.
Which brings me to The Lomographic Society International (lomo.com), a plastic camera company that is partly responsible for this toy trend. Lomo sells Russian deadstock and plastic cameras, and provides a website for the images to be shared, posted, and entered into contests. The crowning achievement of the site is the "World Browser," a meta-art project combining crappy camera photos all over the world to make a visual record of human experience at specific locations.
It is BRILLIANT. One lousy photo of the Eiffel Tower is no big deal; a thousand different lousy-to-good photos of the Eiffel Tower is a study in human perception, skill, tourist-fetishism, and collaboration. The individual images become more interesting when you can compare them to others.
You needn't agree, and you certainly don't need to try out a plastic camera. But 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 thirteen cameras includes:
Why do I own so many cameras if I don't think cameras are the important thing? There are a few reasons. Eight 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, since 15 years devoted solely to the Nikon F made me feel a bit dependent on its specific way of working. My Nikon failed on me twice, and I was concerned about being unable to photograph at all when it is in the camera hospital. Some of the other 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 PhotographyHaving 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 20 years of experience with the Nikon means I can get better results with it than with my 3-ish years of experience with the digital Leica. That doesn't mean the technology is bad: it just means that 20 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 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 will gradually appear, mostly of my favorite places.
2006 was a very good year: as indicated here, my photographic work was included in three books, and my prints were shown in gallery shows in New York & London, with prints currently at a Sacramento, California gallery for a show that begins in January 2007. So I've made some progress in terms of figuring out how to share my work with others, which I will need to build on. I was able to try new things, and have both light and serious fun.
2007 has potential, and I have a very long list of projects I hope to do. I'm hoping to build or buy an archival print washer for delicate papers, so that I can continue my work in vandyke prints, POP prints, and begin experimenting with salt prints without having to individually wash each print for so very long; I'm working on new ways of making enlarged negatives, since my inkjet printer has been unreliable and inconsistent for months; and I hope to go on several printing frenzies, working with negatives that have been waiting a long time for their turn under the UV lights, so that I can develop my thematic portfolios into impressive collections. By the end of the year, I hope to have sets of at least a dozen new, really fabulous prints in each process I have tried so far, both on-line and in a portfolio book for each theme. I've been heading in this direction, but printer problems have been holding me up.
I still hope to build a camera, generally based on Primitive Photography by Alan Greene, as a reward for getting those portfolios completed. I also plan to continue to take photos like an obsessed woman, which I am.
I'll report on other pet projects as they arise.
last updated december 29, 2006