Straight Edge Life

My eyes will not close. The room is dark, the hour is late and I’m due to wake up on only a few hours. I shot film this week and as always when I shoot film, I’m going nuts waiting to see the chromes developed. it’s going to be at least another week before I can see the images. How I’m going to make it, I’m not quite sure. Maybe a whole lot of work. I’ve got enough of it piled up from my negligent vacation in Arizona this week. Hopefully it can tie me over until I can see my chromes.

Shooting film is an entirely different world for me… a beautiful and inspiring world.

I think when I shoot digitally I have a much better chance to get an image that is technically accurate than when shooting with film. You can review your images right there on the spot, make adjustments, and reshoot. But it’s not all roses and tea time. For all the marvelous things about digital photography I still have issues with it. Simply put, the technical convenience of digital photography get in the way of the flow of my shooting and can stand as a barrier between me are my subject. It also stands firmly in the way of my Vision.

As most digital things are for me, digital photography is an intuition killer. It makes it way too easy to use my brain instead of my gut. The safety of image review is overpowering. It removes all the risk from photography. It removes the incentive to listen to your heart. And I don’t think that’s a good thing.

My vision comes from my instinct and my ability to listen to that part of my soul that is willing to take risks. It does not come from my ability to precisely interpret feedback from an lcd histogram. It also relies on a delicate relationship between my subject, myself and my camera. The damn interruption of digital feedbacking (as I will call it) is very effective at destroying this relationship. It’s too easy to pay attention to the lcd than the subject itself.

Also on a more fundamental level, my “vision”, whatever it may be, is a mystery. It is something that I want to experience but it is not necessary for me to quantify it. Nor is it necessary for me to understand it. It just is. And it is usually the result of an emotional need in my life. It could be my path to sorting out a problem I’m having, like how I use this website as a sounding board… it could also be my way of simply expressing my sexuality, or my angst, or my pleasure and fear.

Digital photography is known. It’s quantifiable, verifiable, repeatable. There are few happy accidents. There are few mysteries. And it has little to do with emotion.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve been shooting almost entirely with digital cameras, and loving it, for 5 years straight. I’m finally finding the absolute newest models of DSLRs to be competent machines; worthy of replacing even medium format equipment. I’ve been there for some time and struggled through the growing pains as digital cameras moved quickly up from 2 to 16.7 megapixels. I’ve been there both out of necessity and a geeky pioneering spirity. I know that it is the future of photography, my photography.

I guess I’m just saying that one of the things I love about photography is the visual language of it and the relationship between a photographer, the subject and the equipment. In the analog world it is simple enough to learn some basic rules and let the technical aspect of image making become completely second nature. Excuse the pun but it can fade into the background. Because of digital feedbacking (reviewing the lcd while shooting) I think this is much more difficult with digital photography. It’s like dropping a right-wing republican into an Earth First meeting and telling them all to accomplish a common goal. It takes a very fundamental aspect of a creative process (the relationships) and injects a highly technical and logical element into the mix.

I don’t want photography to be about my ability to ignore the LCD. Discipline isn’t something I’ve ever found to go hand in hand with my image making process. I like it when I don’t have the option of verifying my images along every step of the way. It’s more dangerous and forces me to confront that in a more mature way by making more images, and trusting myself and my decisions.

It will be interesting to see the differences between my digital and my film images from this trip. If I like my film images more I’ll try taping over my lcd with a piece of black paper or something.

I’m sure there’s a way this major earth crisis will work it’s way out. Have no fear.