Digital… An Unfulfilling Experience I bought a Nikon D3200 24.2 Megapixel SLR. I am trying to do digital photography to fund my alternative process, so I went out and started making a portfolio. I pointed the fully automatic camera at things and pressed a button. Then I edited them in Lightroom. I clicked the b&w, sepia, and low saturation filters on several photographs. They looked pretty neat. I went out and took another 550 images. Then I opened them in Lightroom. I went to click on some filters to make some new image looks for my portfolio, but suddenly realized. I’ve already clicked b&w, sepia, and low saturation on photos. There is nothing else you can do to digital images… that was it. 3-4 buttons and the entire journey of digital photography was over. I’ve done it all. Now what? Photoshop dolphins flying through the clouds with rainbows shooting out of their asses. What would be the point? It would be so fake and anyone could do that. When something is to easy, it becomes pointless. I told a lady at work I’m a photographer, before I could finish she cut me off; telling me that her 10 year old niece is as well; She photoshops in backgrounds, clouds, birds ect. The sad truth is that any amazing photograph you can take with a digital camera with amazing photoshop work can be easily replicated by the average 10 year old. Nothing could be more disappointing to me then seeing a digital image on a cold lifeless computer screen. Even a digital print is disgusting to look at; with its sickeningly vided color and soulless pixilated surface. It always looks like an advertisement or cheap novelty poster from the mall. I guess someone that had never mixed photographic chemicals… hand trembling with adrenaline as you try to get that perfect poor… lingering smell of ether in the air… and that ethereal moment when an image forms on the glass plate submerged in the fixer; one of those visceral life experiences that makes you feel alive… as if for the first time. I do think the Nikon D3200 is a great tool, for capturing and sharing image of things, like a burlap sack is handy for holding mud. For me, enjoying digital photography is like trying to enjoy a sack of mud. Art is supposed to make you entrance… mesmerize... make you want to get lost in it and stair at every detail baffled & astonished. Every day I wake up and stair intently at my alternative process images that cover every inch of my walls. Honestly, I’m completely shocked that they are real, well composed and high resolution. I’m overwhelmed with anticipation when I think of all the achievements & inventions left behind by the 19th Century photographers in their race to perfection… leaving countless processes and ideas completely unexplored. Now, suddenly revitalized as photographers turn from their push buttons perfect images to reclaim the old world craftsmanship and artistic mastery of making a “real” photograph. I imagine the excitement Louis Jacques-Mandé Daguerre must have felt as he witnessed the first Daguerreotype image appear on a silver coated copper plate being fumed with mercury. Pushing a button just doesn’t compare.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 23:46:22 +0000
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