 This whole tirade about a single anime OP made me think about modern digital photography tech quietly and slowly stripping away the original purpose from analogue photography. And I think it's a good thing! I think it allowed photography as art to develop in a much rapid pace and achieve much greater heights thanks to Photoshop and digital sensors, but in stripping the film of it's purpose it also uncovered a whole new, previously unexpected layer of the film. 5 comments
Because like I said, each shot you take on film is no longer just an object of art, it's an object of memory. And the more time and effort one takes to take the shot, develop the shot and then, possibly enlarge and print the shot, the stronger the memory is. Perhaps not for anyone else but for the photographer itself, but it still matters. I have taken countless photos with my dad's DSLR and my phone, but I barely remember any of them. The shots I took with my film camera? I remember most of them. I remember reading the light, setting up focus and exposure, I remember loading that film into my little soviet development tank, counting seconds and fuming chems in my bathroom, I remember scanning them, carefully, I remember people I shot and moments I captured in those shots. And I genuinely treasure all of those little photos. And all of those I have carefully filed and preserved. My future children would be able to look at them. Their children and their grandchildren too. Moments of joy and grief, triumph and loss, compacted memories enshrined in crystallized silver on a strip of celluloid film. I think that's neat. I think that's beautiful. I think analogue photography is the fusion of engineering, physics and chemistry that produces something really special and sacred. A tiny, real-life miracle. |
Gregory's Server
Because now since you're not required to use film to be artistic or productive with film, the only thing the film has left going for it is effort.
The effort of measuring exposure, of counting your limited shots, of making the best work you got, in a professional or artistic field, those are limitations, but in the field of amateurs fucking around with cameras it's a blessing.