K - so this is my VERY FIRST POST on this (what seems wonderful) forum...
JJ rouseau, born the son of a watchmaker, throws his watch away in contempt of the moral/ethical discourse associated with the human manufacture of time.... Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of virtue and morality... and becomes one of the most prominent philosophers of mosdern thought....
Rousseau believed that the implementation of human made technology would undo all that is authentically human about both the arts and the sciences, in turn forging a state of being that was manufactured, predictable, and, in essence, non-human..... so he "liberated" himself from all that bound him to convention...... his watch..... he took it off and tossed itover a cliff....
So... this is more about me than Rousseau... sadly.....
I recently (read:about 2weeks ago) sold my digital camera and all accessories... grrrr... I know... it wasn't easy.... but I'm looking to upgrade and need some time to get the funds together - so for the next little while, am going to shoot exclusively on BW film and process in the darkroom on an old Canon EOS 620, manually process, develop and enlarge...scan and hopefully come up with some stuff that is worthy of printing.
I'm not looking to cut my ear off or anything... but it does feel good to liberate myself from digital post, HDR, digital croppping, etc, etc, etc,....
Not to diminish your conundrum, but how far back do you want to go before you're satisfied? Even film cameras rely on some high tech.
You could reverse direction and try taking a hard rock and etch some designs on a sandstone cliff (while high on whatever) and then work your way forward technologically....
On one hand, I'm inclined to agree with Bernie, but I think that is due in part to the story, which deals with the extreme, larger than life characters within.
On the other hand, I say if it helps reinspire you to shoot more, fantastic. Sometimes it takes a change such as you're making to get the creative juices flowing again.
yes, even in 1839, the currently agreed beginning of photography, that was some super high tech stuff. heck, even rocks and bone fashioned into tools was high tech.
so I say a big whatever to this dude!
technology helps even the playing field yes, but I think the bigger point is to still teach the older ways and how they relate and led to the new. I think you can do both!
Bernie wrote:
Not to diminish your conundrum, but how far back do you want to go before you're satisfied? Even film cameras rely on some high tech.
You could reverse direction and try taking a hard rock and etch some designs on a sandstone cliff (while high on whatever) and then work your way forward technologically....
The fun really begins when you stir up the red ochre!
Yeah.... you guys are right... but being a graduate of a 3d modelling and animation course I was getting totally bored with digital post processing, and wanted to do something more hands on.... I really am inspired by hooting on film (totally understanding that the film camera itself was a piece of technology - in fact it was the topic of my master's thesis)...
And yes- it is getting me shooting more... and differently... so i am glad...
though it is hard not to look at the back of the camera for a preview...
not_an_artist wrote:
[...] I'm not looking to cut my ear off or anything... but it does feel good to liberate myself from digital post, HDR, digital croppping, etc, etc, etc,....
I guess we'll see how it turns out...lol....
Ok, so why didn't you just get two or three primes and shoot JPG small?
You don't have to post-process, except maybe resize for web.
I wish you all the best, don't get me wrong here, but you might just have taken too drastic measures.
I too am a digital 3d artist. Lighting/rendering, materials and camera work for commercials and features are my area. And also like you, I enjoy shooting film because (partly) it gets me away from digital things for a bit.
However, I don't see digital as being much worse than film in most respects. In my view, processing a digital image (minus cloning and things like that) are quite akin to darkroom processing. Control over contrast (global and local) is the same ends with a different means. As far as I'm concerned anyway. I happily shoot both film (large format B&W) and digital (35mm), I don't consider the digital to be the 'easy way out' (though for me being a digital artist, it's my nature), and I don't consider the film to be the 'best way', they are just 'different ways' to me. Nor does a photograph on the wall make me think any less of it if I know it to be captured by film or digitally.
Good luck with it though, I hope you find what you are looking for! If you are looking for a more 'nostalgic/classic' feeling while photographing, I might suggest shooting large format, it gives you a nice 'nostalgic' feeling when shooting. Old LF cameras and lenses can be found in working condition for pretty good prices now days. (Prices seem to fluctuate up and down though, with time, and depending on the model of camera/lens.) And since you are processing your film on your own, that step is already taken care of.
The quantification of time has had a far greater impact than the digitalization of photography... I think the parallelism is a bit misplaced. Symbolically, the watch is representative of much "bigger" ideas of technology and science than the camera, IMO.
It's not the media, it's the artist, you can use charcoal, or crayola crayons or an extermly expensive camera. No they don't even the playing field, if you don't have an eye you don't have an eye. All the teaching in the world will not help that. I have seen stunning polaroids, and terrible 10 mpixel shots. I shoot digital because of the freedom and cost. No longer will I ever shoot 15 rolls on Saturday to go to the tank and find only a few pictures I like. I now have over 30,000 shots on my camera and it is a little over a year old. I could never afford to do that with film, ad keepy marriage.
"Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of virtue and morality... and becomes one of the most prominent philosophers of mosdern thought...."
I will argue he was wrong.
My view is :
The progression of Science and Art, exposed the ignorance that formed much of Morality.
So in that vein, I can now go out and look to find this on film.
will reply in about a year or two. !
in the meantime, best wishes to you and your endeavor.
So, how are you posting to this forum now that you've thrown off the shackles of modern technology?....semaphore flags?
: )
I look back on my amateur experience with film and darkroom work with a nostalgic romance. There's something about watching the image suddenly appear in the chemical bath that you just don't get with today's digital process.
But that same digital process also opens up so many artistic possibilities. I think you're wise to not want to just click on a pre-processed plugin to make all your pictures look like copies of so many others out there, but the great thing about it is you can get in there and get your hands dirty and put your own mark on an image even with all the conveniences of todays software. And do things quite frankly you'd never be able to do with film and darkroom work alone.
You'll be baaack...but in the meantime we'll be looking forward to your film work.
Ontime.... I dunno.... I understand that the clock was a piece of technology engineered by man to regulate human behaviours..... in fact the clock was first used to ensure that monks got all the proper amount of prayers in every day... it was later appropriated by King Henry to regulate business hours.... now we, as a society, are bound by the limits of a human construction...its not real.... how long does a "moment" register on an analogue (or digital) clock....?.....Why do some hour long lectures seem like an eternity, but my christmas vacation feels considerably less long?
Point being - I totally get the time thing, but I really think that the means by which we preserve images - memories - truth.... has never been as alterable as it is in the digital age... Wrinkles GONE, Underexposed GONE, someone in the shot you don't want GONE... I find the digital post process a sort of revisionist history.
Not that I can't alter images in the darkroom, or by the way I shoot them, or use slow shutter speeds to prove the existence of ghosts, but the idea of the light that reflects directly off of what I am capturing, hitting the film, and being pulled onto paper, just seems so much more pure.... (I'm ready for the digital equivalent argument....lol)
I'm going to give it a go for a while.... (except for a few weddings I am going to do to hopefully let me purchase a Large format camera... and maybe a darkroom.... if my wife lets me.....)
It's a simple variation on the interpretation of "reality." Artists have had control of this... since art has existed.
A civilization's perspective of time has a significant impact on culture. Our modern view is largely linear, progressive, and quantified - seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, and so on. Western society has carried this perspective for many centuries. What do you think would have happened if we believed, say, that time was a cyclical, spiritual entity? I doubt you'd see the dials on your camera indicating shutter speed, likely, nor the camera itself, nor the Type A personality, nor much of the progression we see in our world.
Remember, I'm not talking about just the clock. Rousseau wasn't either. As Plautus said, roughly 2,000 years ago:
The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial to cut and hack my days so wretchedly into small portions!
...lol... for sure... the linear nature of our "perception" of time is only linear if you distinguish it as such.... - NO?...- All of these people were talking about capturing truth... the essence of what is real.... observable.... feelable.... to us....
I think we are arguing the same point.... its all crap, manufactured, and misleading....
Much why I want to step away and capture the images that are REAL, NON PROCESSED, and AUTHENTIC.... and live our "real existance".....NO?
Mike, I keep wrestling with what is too much PP. I'm sure many here do as well.
However, think of an image as telling a story, even if it is a simple, "look at this beutiful (or insert other modifier) moment in time." In PJ, it needs to be as objective as possible. In story telling (for art, entertainment, etc.), parts of the story may be left out, and others enhanced, to make a point or a joke.
Thanks for your kind critique on my images, but you probably noticed I don't do PJ. What I am left with is sometimes a subtlety to bring out the image as I saw or imagined it. Other times, I push the sliders to the max because the image (the story) requires it.
We each have a story to tell and our way of communicatiing it. Our individual style develops with the methods we choose, be it on a sensor, film, tin , albumen, silver, etc. To paraphrase Ansel Adams, "A picture is not taken, it is made."
My comment earlier about pecking into sandstone was not (totally) sarcastic. Before I discovered digital imaging, I was forming clay by wheel and by various other hand techniques. For a tradition that is over 12,000 years old, there are some real purists in ceramics who would have you use some awfully strange and anachronistic methods as was done hundreds of years ago in far away places....
I guess the battle rages on in any medium... Find yourself. And above all else, enjoy!
