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Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 22:02:22 -0800
To: 
From: Carl Cook 
Subject: Re: Advantages 
In-Reply-To: 
References: 
 
 
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So you saying that basically, an advantage of digital photography is that=20
it liberates the photographer from the darkroom? What if the photographer=20
doesn't feel imprisoned?

This will come up again tomorrow (Wed) in the classroom. Can you think of=20
any items that can be listed out that are an advantage or disadvantage of=20
the two technologies?

Thanks

Carl

BTW, I too have felt a new surge of creative energy as the bulk of my work=
=20
has become digital, but I have yet to feel the level of satisfaction in=20
holding up the finished matted print as I did when I labored for days over=
=20
one print. For me, digital is too easy, and (in black and white at least,)=
=20
the print is close, but no see-gar! Your quote of Ansel's is appropriate=20
here, and the old buzzard was right on the money.


>Digital files CAN last a lot longer, providing they are backed up at
>intervals. Zeros and ones are indestructable, but the medium on which they
>reside can become obsolete and unreadable due to the onrush of technology
>and the actual substance used. On the other hand, the same technology makes
>backup more convenient and quicker every day.
>
>Colour dyes fade in time and colour negatives are almost impossible to
>adequatley back up - other than digitally. While they could be separated,
>with the separations being done on silver based film, few people have=
 either
>the skills or time to do so. Slides can be copied, but again it is not easy
>to do an exact replication and since they are backed up onto other slide
>film, they begin their fade all over again.
>
>The tapes used during the early days of the space program are said to hold=
 a
>true historic treasure of data, and documenting the beginning of an era.=
 The
>equipment they were made on has long since gone to the junk yard. Since
>first hearing about this, some agency may have funded hand building a
>reader, but I have not heard of it.
>
>Books are printed on acidic paper and libraries are full of paper flakes.
>Some of my colour prints have faded dramatically, and the negatives are
>thousands of miles away - if they still exist. (Shot for hire.) We generate
>incredible quantities of information each second, most of it upon fugitive
>media. Very little of it is carved into stone tablets, except over the
>little bit of ground that folks occupy while they too disintegrate.
>
> > Traditional photography has a long and rich history, and has a lot of
> > soul.
>
>It has been in existance roughly two centuries, compared to the less than a
>decade of digital. With the number of practioners shooting tin-types, glass
>plates and film, it is reasonable that someone is eventually gonna get it
>together. The photographers - not the medium - have the soul.
>
> > Digital: instant feedback, easier to make large color prints, digital
> > darkroom, traditional photography's next logical step in its evolution,
> > etc.
>
>There have been some landmarks in photography Thomas Wedgewood's first
>exposures on paper saturated with silver-nitrate in 1802, but images could
>not be fixed. It was not until 1826 that Joseph Ni=E9pce actually made
>something that could be called a photograph. Again a long period of
>development where photography was pretty much limited to the pros. In 1889,
>George Eastman produced the first roll film, which eventually brought
>photography to the masses. Another long period of development until the=
 next
>milestone, in 1935, with Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes and=
 Kodachrome.
>While there were other colour processes before them, this was the first
>colour film a shooter could buy over the counter and take to the drug-store
>to be processed. Again a long period until the mid 1990s when the first CCD
>cameras came on the market.
>
>I am quite sure at each milestone, there was some crusty old
"purist" that
>said "There goes the neighborhood". "This will be the
end of photography!"=
 I
>remember grumps complaining that with built-in lightmeters, if they broke -
>you were out of business. (Like you could not just fish out your Weston and
>keep going.) When the light meter was linked to the aperture and shutter,
>that was the end as well. No one would need photographers. Same with
>automatics.
>
>What these dolts can not get through their thick heads is that cameras=
 don't
>make photographs, photographers do. Whether a glass plate, a roll film or a
>CCD, it is far more similar than different.
>
>In the era of glass plates, one did not go to the one-hour lab for
>processing. Everyone did their own or had an assistant to do it. Eastman
>said something to the effect "You push the button and we will do
the rest",
>eliminating perhaps the most essential step of the process.Many people half
>a century back had home darkrooms. Colour pretty much put a stop to that.
>
>As Ansel is quoted, "The exposure is the score, the print is the
>performance".
>
>Digital has put us back in the era of the glass plate, we once again do our
>own processing and it has liberated us from the tyrany of having out work
>interpreted by an overworked lab-tech. Putting the whole process back in=
 the
>hands of the shooter, is probably the most significant part of digital
>photography.
>
>I close my last fume-room in the mid '80s and my personal work dwindled and
>almost ceased. I could never feel that the prints I picked up and stashed=
 in
>the shoe boxes were really mine. The results were consistent - consistently
>bland. Unless there was a pay-check at the end of the shoot, I rarely=
 picked
>up a camera. The little Nikon CP990 and the digital darkroom ended that.
>
>Now I am extremely fired up, with an enthusiasm I have not felt since the
>first years of discovery. My only regret is that I am not starting out now
>in the digital era. I have found my comfort spot and my pictures show it.
>
>I have run into an interesting thing in the past couple of months. Digital
>camera users who declare themselves "purists", who refuse to
do any image
>processing. Nothing could be less pure. Wedgewood back in 1802 was=
 desparate
>for some means to fix his image which quickly faded. Doing photography has
>always involved processing.
>
>The exposure is the raw materials gathered in the field for the banquet.
>However, just like a banquet, you do not serve the ingredients - no matter
>how fine - until they are properly blended, seasoned and cooked to
>perfection - or as close as possible. I strongly suspect that the
"purist"
>is using it as an excuse to avoid the learning curve. A slacker who takes
>the moral high ground to humble those around him with his virtue, is none
>the less just a slacker and no more.
>
>Digital is not about silicon vs silver. Digital returns the whole process=
 to
>the shooter, conception, exposure, processing and presentation. That is the
>true significance of digital - liberation from the one-hour lab!
>
>larry!
>ICQ 76620504
>http://www.larry-bolch.com/
>
>
>
>
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