i posted this in a couple different forums a few days ago. but then it occurred to me, why not throw it in my photography blog?
anyway.
while whittling the hours away (oh so slowly) at work, i picked through all of my digital stuff from the year 2007, and picked out my 20 favorite shots. here they are, in chronological order:
see ya in ‘08.
But wait a minute. I just GOT that lens over the summer. And I’ve been taking photos for much longer than just this summer. And you know what, some of those photos are even halfway decent. So maybe I CAN take photos without that lens. Let’s give it a try.
So off me and that same friend went to the Newark Jail. I dusted off my 50mm prime which hadn’t seen much use since I got the 2.8 lens, and I did lots of work with narrow depth of field.
And the set of photos I came up with are (in my opinion) some of the best stuff I’ve come up with in a long time. I didn’t even have my $1200 lens. All I had was a lousy $100 non-zooming piece of plastic lens. And yet I came out with tons of photos I was extremely happy with.
Just goes to show, you don’t need the best equipment to make the best pictures. You just need the best frame of mind.
I’m sick of this shit. That’s exactly what it is: shit. Crappy photos hidden under caked on layers of effects and digital makeup like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I guess I just don’t 
understand digital art. Yeah, Photoshop can make things look like they are wrapped in plastic wrap. Yeah! Alright! And you can take certain things and make them color, and make everything else black and white. Cool! And what about the effects where you make the photo look like it was done in another medium, say, a piece of charcoal! Awesome! Now let’s put them all together in a giant kindergarten-like finger painting and see what we come up with! Absolute SHIT. 
My digital camera body, a Nikon D50, is extremely out of date.
It’s only 6 megapixels. Its frame burst rate is laughable. It has unbelievably high noise at ISO 1600. There is dust all over the sensor. The focusing screen is scratched.
My tripod is falling apart. The pin keeps coming loose out of one leg, and I fear one day I will loose it and the leg will no longer be attached to the rest of the tripod. It can’t hold my heavy wide angle lens when I put the camera in portrait orientation. I have to jam an empty pack of cigarettes between the camera and the quick release plate to make the connection tighter. And this makes the camera uneven. Actually, the entire tripod is not level for reasons I do not understand.
My zoom lens is slow and heavy. My wide angle lens is not wide angle enough.
Nothing is right.
But there’s one thing I do have: Photos. Tons and tons of photos.
I could sit at home and scrimp and save every penny, wait until I get enough money to get the exact equipment I want. Faster lenses, stronger tripods, better bodies. But the longer I wait, the more of these places disappear, and the less photos and memories I get.
Nothing is ever perfect in photography. Equipment fails, subjects are uncooperative, locations have problems. Things happen, that’s life. I’m only 26. I can’t expect to have two grand to piss away on the perfect gear setup. Then again, I might never have that kind of money to just throw around. I am envious of those who do. Photography is definitely a gearhead kind of hobby.
But these bells and whistles are not necessary to get great photos. I have seen photos taken with thirty year old cameras with kit lenses and expired film that trump even professional level digital slrs. It’s all in the user.
So I’m just going to keep plugging away with my beaten and worn equipment, and I’m just going to keep producing stellar results from what I have (n’t). Otherwise, I wouldn’t produce any results at all.
Photography is a matter of compromise.
One thing I definitely appreciate about digital photography is the ease of “messing around.” Sometimes I just want to try something out, just play with this and that to “see what happens.” Ugly? That’s ok. Just close the file and don’t save. That’s it. No harm done.
Experimentation is a lot more work in the wet darkroom, since a session in the wet darkroom requires quite a bit of set-up and take-down time, and every print requires developer, stop bath, fixer, and water before it is fully finished. No good? Ok, we have to try then again then. Over and over until you either give up or end up with a positive result.
With Photoshop I can use adjustment layers so that the original image is unharmed, and the changes can easily be hidden or removed if necessary. This is a great thing! Maybe I want to try darkening the sky…..in the traditional darkroom with a couple hours of work already under my belt, I might say I’m too lazy, it looks fine how it is. But with Photoshop I can begin to play with it and see if it’s even worth further investigating the adjustment. Nothing there? No problem, I only spent 30 seconds working on it anyway. No harm done.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/73349
Sums up my entire conflicted being.
Once upon a time when photography was a fairly new technology, the Daguerreotype was the main form of photographic method. But then eventually wet-plate collodion surpassed this….and ambrotypes and tin types appeared…..and then there’s cyanotyping….platinum palladium prints became the cutting edge photographic method for almost fifty years until materials became too expensive….then more traditional gelatin silver prints came into the mainstream….but then color film really took hold and all of a sudden when I was twelve and at my very first middle school dance ever, everyone had these little cardboard “funsaver” cameras. Point is, technology is constantly effecting photographic method. I recall being a brownie away on a camping trip at Camp Mogisca somewhere up in New York state, and I don’t know why this always sticks with me, but Camela Banzon had a Polaroid camera and was taking pictures of some geese by the lake. I don’t think I had ever seen a Polaroid camera before. When she took the photo out and told me I had to “shake it” in order to get it to develop faster, I thought this was the weirdest thing I had ever heard.
Now digital photography has really done a number on film. With the exception of color and black and white film photography, basically every other photography method in the aforementioned paragraph are now classified as “alternative” processes. “Alternative” meaning unusual I suppose. Different from the norm. So my question as, as digital photography continues its crusade to rule all that is the art of the image capture, when does 35mm film become considered an alternative process? When will my silver gelatin based prints be considered an unusual method of photographic production? At the rate the world is turning, it could be sooner than later. I think silver gelatin based prints will always have a place in photography, namely fine arts photography. But the numbers are definitely dwindling. It’s so obvious: you can see it in the photographic products pulled from the shelves every year. There is no profit in the film industry anymore. Thank you, progress.
So then this leads me to my next question: How long until digital is an alternative process? And even stranger…..what will replace digital to make it an alternative process? It warps my mind.
