Digital photography: A reconciliation

In the early years of the 21^st century I was eager to discover if there was even an inkling of artistic talent concealed behind a brain -in this case my very own lump of gray matter – that had been fine-tuned to perform in math and science since time immemorial. Consequently I undertook a series of half-hearted attempts to get involved in some “artsy” activities one of which was photography, probably the most accessible of all the arts, since every trained monkey can take pictures – right? Hence I joined the photography class of my university, eagerly learning about the technical aspects – lenses, shutter speeds, depths of fields, film sensitivities – and sitting through hours and hours of slide projections that provided an overview of the work of such illustrious artists as Koudelka, Kertész, Doisneau and many others.

Our wonderful -albeit not very serious- instructors tried to instil into us the virtues of a true photographer among which are patience, perseverance, alertness – necessary if one is to seize good opportunities for a shot -, the ability to run 100 m in less than 10 seconds – vital if one is to escape the security guards of a public facility where photography is prohibited- and, last but not least: the ability to resist temptation. And by temptation I do not mean the one that faces the lewd fashion photographer who struggles  -yeah, right !- with the thought of  getting intimate with his models  but rather a technical one, and that is to desist, at all costs, from laying hands upon an evil, infernal contraption called a digital camera. At the time, digital cameras were rapidly becoming accessible to the unwashed masses thanks to dropping prices and to sites like flickr.com and picasa that were enabling even the last 95-year-old granny to show her holiday pictures to the entire universe – that is, if the aliens are nosey enough to collect and decode the entirety of the earth’s electromagnetic emissions.

Our mentors therefore implored us to please not become like the nondescript Joe Average who mindlessly pointed and clicked through his life capturing not beauty but banality. When we retorted that monochrome analogue photography was cumbersome and complicated  they insisted that it is precisely the complicated procedure and the manual work that bestowed it with the status of an art. To them digital photography was to analogue what analogue once was to painting: a vulgarization.

Years went by and I left the darkrooms never to return; let’s face it: a hypochondriac radiation-phobic like me just didn’t fit in a badly ventilated room that was full of fumes of not-so-good-for-your-health chemicals. I put away my trusty 1970s Pentax Spotmatic II and relied on an El Cheapo Olympus point-and-shoot film camera for the occasional holiday picture. It was later replaced by an equally cheap and bulky digital camera that served similar purposes. But then, last month, I had the chance of using a real digital camera – one of the more expensive dSLR ones – …and suddenly I remembered what photography was supposed to be about. I don’t know what triggered this cataclysm of feelings: Was it the luscious “clich” sound of the camera’s mechanism? Was it the instantaneous readiness to take a new picture – in contrast to cheaper cameras that need seconds to write the file to their memory card ? Regardless of the exact reason, I felt that given such a camera, I could photograph the world! Would I take quality shots? Not necessarily but at least I had regained my old craving to learn how to do so. But then, as I was  relishing the thought of retrying myself at the Daguerreian arts, the old brainwashing and conditioning that had been inflicted upon me by my mentors resurfaced: “true artists use only analogue because it forces you to think and appreciate before you shoot. Digital makes it too easy”. Aha! Does it really? And then I  mentally rebelled!

You see, dear reader, in the olden days of analogue photography and darkrooms things were not THAT difficult…sure..there was no Photoshop, no memory cards and no printers…but there was film roll…..countless metres of it. Photographers would take literally hundreds of pictures during a given assignment, then develop the film – a process that does not depend much on the quantity of film involved – and produce contact prints that are, in a way, the equivalent of us previewing our digital pictures on a monitor. Only after carefully studying their contacts would they choose the best pictures that would eventually be printed using a projector.

So how exactly did analogue photography promote “thinking” before shooting? It is true that film was not free -like taking a digital picture – but it was very affordable. As to all the automation that modern cameras have -that can also make things “too easy”- , one can very easily disable it and control all the parameters  by oneself. What is the left is the essence of photography which does not depend on whether the image is captured by  chemical film or  CCD: selecting the time, the place, the subject, the lighting , the exposure in order to capture the “spirit of the moment”. Then the mastery lies in choosing the best shots among the many taken , processing  and printing them. I will admit that processing opportunities offered by modern software are immense compared to the “manual” procedures that older photographers used. That nevertheless does not stop one from limiting oneself to the absolute minimum required to produce a crisp and clear picture with a high dynamic range. And this picture has all the potential of becoming a work of art.

Now if only I could find the money to buy myself a serious camera…

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