After listening to Edward Burtynsky talk about his 10,000 year Gallery on CBC radio I started realising something: I agree. Specifically on his thoughts on the digital age and how we should welcome back the traditional ways of printed film photography!
A computer of course! Unless you think going to those printing machines at the department stores are cheaper. It’s up to you. Either way we need to find a way for our digitally formatted photography to be viewed. So then we print. But what if you have over 5000 pictures? Why would you spend so much money printing them? Well, you don’t. You’ll just en up showing off your pictures from the screensavers or make lots of slideshows. But you’ll still need a machine with a screen. Either that or you’ll only print out selected pictures that you never really put any more thought into than that.
But what about the manipulation of pictures on the computer that could never be done in the traditional ways?
But in that case, u'll then need go buy another computer which can become more expensive than just buying the blasted 35mm flims!
Ok, so now we've switched to films. A supposedly long process of buying the 5$ film, loading it in the camera, and then clicking away. Or just buy a disposable for a couple more bucks. Oh, but wait! You only have 24-36 shots! Better make the most of it and save your time on things that are worth remembering. But isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that what photography is all about? Taking your time, looking, observing, seeing things as they are with your own eyes first? Contemplating and hesitating are keys to taking a good photograph since you won’t really know the result until it’s developed. I don’t remember the last time I did that with a digital camera in my hands knowing the picture will instantaneously appear on the LCD screen. So what if we all take a little more time with film photography? Why have we come to think that film is too time consuming? Why do we all have to hurry?
Unfortunately hastiness and laziness is inevitable in this technological age and that is why traditional photography is disappearing. So until everyone decides to slow down again, I think it should come back!
http://blog.longnow.org/2008/07/24/edward-burtynsky-the-10000-year-gallery/
http://www.cbc.ca/spark/blog/2008/09/full_interview_ed_burtynsky_on_1.html
1 comment:
First off, I'd like to share an observation. Before I could post this comment I was forced to type a "Verification Word" to ensure that I was actual human and had eyes to see with and fingers to type with. Blogger.com asked me to type the *WORD* "kerspum"... "Kerspum" is definitely not a word!
I stumbled upon your blog site while checking out your link to the Avatar clip. That is certainly going to be an epic film. Lets see if it'll gross as much as The Titanic.
I really liked this post of yours. I was reading an article yesterday complaining about the author's friend who somehow managed to fill 80GB worth of memory cards within a few days in Cuba! Some people really do take it to the limit.
I agree that in some respects photography has lost a lot to the digital age. If we could all just disable the 2 second quick-views of our digital cameras and actually take the time to imagine in our minds eye what we want the image to look like instead of blindly snapping and most likely deleting most pictures we might actually get a few great shots in.
One of my favorite photos that I've taken was with an old Yashica analog camera. I wasn't even sure if the camera worked or not, but I shoved a roll of film in there and played around for a while. The picture is of my sister biting off the nose of a snowman we had made in our front lawn. Oh, the memories...
Post a Comment