Today I engaged in an old, familiar task for what may be the last time. I captioned slides. While captioning and sleeving the black and white copy slides, I included into the task two boxes of film that have been sitting on my desk for six months. It is as if they have been chiding me all this time for abandoning them in favor of the new digital mistress. Well, now they’re labelled, and sleeved, and tomorrow I’ll scan them so my stock agency can see them.
Looking at the slides was bittersweet. I love the look of film. I love the texture of grain. I like the creaminess of film, the soft transitions between midtones and highlights. I like not being able to control precisely what I’m going to get, and I am surprised a little bit whenever I open a box of slides. What has the film god given me this time? What has he taken away? Film feels so final, complete, fulfilled. It is an artifact that I can handle, it is real, it truly exists, which is something I’m never quite certain with digital.
Photography with film is something I used to do. It is history.
hi doug! i don't remember if i told you before, but i'm taking a b&w darkroom class right now. funny how you are getting into digital just as i am learning how to work film! even though it's getting obsolete i am still really glad i've had this opportunity. taking photographs the original way is freeing in so many ways. i am a lot more conscious of the number of frames i'm shooting, the whole content and shape of the frame... (it's not so easy to just "crop it later"!) anyway, check out my recent photos if you want. i found a site that hosts them in a much more logical way than before. most of them are dancy but there's some other stuff too.
Posted by: nina | June 26, 2005 at 07:22 PM