“Balance” is an attribute that I find really important to my life.
In wandering through life I have often found that most things do not work best in absolutes, but rather, in a gradient between said absolutes. I think it’s just sort of how I operate: I look for the middle ground. At worst, this makes me a wishywashy fence sitter who can see both sides of nearly every argument, but at best it gives me an interesting and possibly unique view of the world.
I am, in fact, going somewhere with this, and it mostly has to do with my thoughts on technology. I’m a bit of a techno-fiend. I think progress and new inventions are great. I love tech, all tech– old tech and new tech. It speaks volumes to me about optimism, ingenuity, and creativity.
I love when we use technology to figure out how to make something better. (Or how to make a robot suit.)
Anyways.
Sometimes this gives me a bit of a dilemma. Since I love old tech as well as new tech, it’s occasionally hard for me to say farewell to something old in order to embrace something new. We live in an interesting time. There is so much that I’ve seen fall by the wayside over the course of my own short lifespan that thinking back to my childhood is like thinking back to an alien world that somehow managed to get by with landline phones, fax machines, snail mail, and these newfangled things called VCRs.
So I’ve seen a lot of things change in just two and a half decades. As I see things change I pause to kind of contemplate what it means (I was that middle-school kid who actually stopped to think about the impending repercussions of DVD), but then I move on, because that’s life, right? Change and improvements! Awesome!
But occasionally something changes that I’m close to. Like film.
Between my love affair with the darkroom in college (a place to which I’d happily sneak away to after hours, to print my own non-assignment-based pictures) and a year-long stint of working in a One-Hour Photo Lab, I know a lot about film processing. I think it’s a fascinating and amazing process that combines my love of chemistry with my love of art and my love of, well, a lot of things. But who uses film anymore? When I worked in the One-Hour Photo it was a big deal when the percentage of digital orders we processed surpassed that magical 50% mark and usurped traditional film. And that was in… 2006, I think? I sort of don’t want to know how the number looks now.
That’s not to say I’m anti-digital-photography. Au contraire, the digital camera is an awesome technological achievements in and of itself, offering unsurpassed convenience in a variety of ways.
But there is something in that magical darkroom that I don’t want to lose. Just as there is something in my mechanical watch that I don’t want to lose, either.
Or maybe I’m just being a nostalgia geek. That’s possible, too. In the meantime I’ll continue to balance the best of the Old with the best of the New, because I don’t want to limit my love to just the New and Shiny.
I totally relate to this. I really prefer to read things on paper. Email? Will print. Leave a note, let me get a pad. I have tired, time and again to use my computer, my phone or whatever digital device there is, but I keep coming back to the good old paper and pen. Books are the same for me. I infinity prefer a hardcopy. Can read the digital version, but it just doesn’t feel the same.
It just makes me happy and I feel at home with them by my side. There are some things, like the darkroom and film, while ‘improved’ by technology, it doesn’t automatically mean it is better.
*Hugs* and may you never leave your darkroom unused!
For several years, I worked in the color and black & white (yes, there is specific film and paper just for black and white) darkrooms for a commercial photographer. Ah, the smell of Fixative; the long tunnel entrances that keep light from leaking in; the enlarger! I LOVE the enlarger… a little nylon stocking over the lens to soften the wrinkles. I’ve been commissioning and editing professional photography for a long time now; digital photography has come a long, long way but it still cannot quite recreate flesh tones.
I’m with you on a lot of this; I’m also the type that feels absolutes don’t work and feels like we’re losing something with film.
To expand on that, I think what’s being lost with purely digital photography is the act of making a photo. When what you had was ~30 exposures and no ability to see your photo until it was processed, photography was forced to be more of a craft. Even people taking nostalgic pictures had to be more selective in what they photographed, but on the art side of it, you were paying attention to exposure, composition, timing, and anything else needed to achieve your vision. After that, you still needed to develop the film properly, then develop prints. Essentially it made each exposure precious.
I don’t mean to say that digital photography is bad; much the contrary. I’ve moved entirely to digital photography, but I haven’t left behind what I’ve learned from film. I have a 2GB card in my camera, and I don’t think I’ll ever need more. That’s ~500 exposures and I aim to make ~80% of my shots good. I can also pull up a histogram immediately after taking a photo to see just how well I’ve exposed the image and get an idea if my composition works well. I don’t cut out the dark room experience, either. Just like I would make a contact sheet and decide which images were worth printing, I look through all my exposures and then work with the best to produce the final images that I print or share.
I suppose what I believe is that everyone should still start with film, if only to learn the value of a single exposure.
I currently do work in the photo department of a large store. We see roughly 1-2 percent physical film. No thoughts beyond that information. :/
*Forcibly turns everyone into cyborgs* =D?
Speaking of using technology to make something better, have you seen the salad spinner cum centrifuge for diagnosing anemia? The elegance of the solution almost made my inner geek explode (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/salad-spinner-to-help-diagnose-anemia-in-third-world/2229).
I’m with you on this. Darkrooms are magical. To this day my favorite photographs that I’ve taken are ones I developed and printed myself, taken on an old Nikon FM2. Manual everything!
But of course I love my Pentax DSLR too, and I could never do my Project 365 – taking a new photo and posting it on Flickr every day – with film.
lol @ boomkin picture
Yeah, there’s just something in general about newer technology, it just makes things seem so much more…rushed. Like when old-time writers would have to start over for an entire page if they made a mistake or wanted to re-work something, but now we can just edit directly in a word processor. It changes something about how you write, I think.
Also, I knew a guy who would only use a darkroom for photography. But, then again, he also liked silent movies…go figure.
Yeah.. I only recently started working with film.. I’ve been doing some large-format work, which is one of the few places where old techniques still surpass digital in terms of resolution and so forth. There are only a few, very expensive sensors that can match a Medium Format film camera in terms of detail.. and none that can match even the smaller (4×5 as opposed to 8×10) of the two most common Large Format films, which I was working with.. I have a couple boxes of film sitting on my desk right now, in fact.
But while I love what you can do with film, and I admit working in the darkroom is grand (even though it stinks my hands up for days.. I understand that developing roll film can be done entirely in a container, and even with the lights turned on for part of the process, but I was working with trays full of chemicals in the dark.. fun times.) I hate hate hate the guys I know who insist that film is somehow better than digital. The ones who insist that it is better visually are simply wrong, or don’t understand the concept of pixels or data formatting.. there are others, however, who swear that film is ‘more artistic’ because it ‘brings you closer to the work’.. these are the people who make me sick.
Oh, and there are also some I know who insist film is more stable for archival than digital.. like anyone who cares about their images will allow them to stay in a format once that format starts to be taken over by a better one.
Anyway, what I’m saying is that there are still reasons to use film, and other analogue methods, over digital in some cases.. there will still be reasons even when we start to make Large Format sensors, ones that won’t cost a king’s ransom.. film reacts differently to light than sensors ever will. However, using film for purposes that digital can do better, easier and with less waste, just because it is nostalgic.. I personally find that silly, although there will always be those who disagree.
@roobus yeah i saw the article about that. Awesome bit of inventing on those student’s parts.
I too fondly remember my time in a darkroom. Jr. High yearbook..
I work in digital now whenever I do any photography, Tho I still have a few rolls of undeveloped 35mm.
There is nothing however like the anticipation of watching a polaroid image form.
ok. my mom ownes a metal fabrecation shop.(I am 12 btw) she had a bunch of scrap 6″ scrap tubing. so i set off with a small forge, a welder, a plasma cutter and some scrap 6″ tubing and 1/4″ plate. 2 months later, ( after interweaving this between my engine that im building, i finnaly comeplete it.
an iron man suit.
no its not robotic, but im working on it. (im thinking of using pneumatic with some valves or something:/)
but i can lift it and walk around. thats what counts.
oh yah. and the kids at school wont touch me anymore.