Inspiration
I’m not sure what inspires me these days. I’ve been, well, very quiet to be truthful. My day job occupies a lot of my time – more than I would like – but I do what I can outside of work to keep pieces of my brain from scattering to bits. Good image, no?
I’ve been taking this photography class for the last few weeks (there are two sessions left) and realized just the other day how much I’ve learned. Not only that but I’ve realized just how much I don’t suck. I’ve always thought less of my abilities in most things I’ve done – call me crazy or just a gal with some esteem issues. Sometimes, classes like these (where, to be truthful, there are people that really do suck) that really wake me the fuck up.
I’ve been doing a lot of photographing the ol’ fashion way. Funny how doing art with a manual camera classifies itself now as ‘old fashioned’. It makes me laugh slightly. Its sort of a lost art. With all the digitizing, the erasing, the fixing and adding with Photoshop, I think many people do forget just how hard it is to get the photograph right the first time. For a few years, I abandoned my manual camera and it collected dust in my junk cabinet because I had bought, at the time, a fancy shmancy lil camera that could store pictures digitally..imagine that! Right on the darn thing. And even better, you could take the pictures right out and delete them if you didn’t like them! I found how easy it was to just delete and change things at a whim.
I’m not saying other people who use digital are wankers. That’s not where this conversation (with myself it seems) is supposed to be going. Some people like pencils better than pens. Some people like Macs better than Windows machines. Both have their very special uses and places in the world I suppose. For me, right now and in this moment, I think I’m learning a ton getting down and dirty with my manual. I feel..a sense of durability and ruggedness with my manual that I’ve never felt before…I feel like I know what I’m doing.
I’ve also been taking a ton of photos just on slide film (its a teeny transparency mounted on white cardboard, basically) because I have found it gives me the best detail and quality. To be honest, it also sorta makes me feel badass. I was working with a client the other day and whipped out my hand-held projector and a few slides and kinda liked hearing the comments: whoa…what’s that?!. As silly as it sounds, I felt all learned.
Posting slide photos online does present its challenges I’ve found. First off, its not as if I can stick them in a cardreader and just upload them. There’s a bit of scanning involved (on the scanner that I don’t own, of course), resizing, and archiving. And I’m not so sure if I’m ready for all that extra work. That’s definitely a plus about digital photographs – it makes things convenient.
My teacher did bring up an interesting perspective about digital photography vs film. Something about being able to delete photographic history as if it never happened. In a way, I see what he means…its a little scary to think you can just push a button and have everything you don’t like just not exist anymore…it really got me thinking…
That’s all for now. Do know I’m alive and well..maybe not so much kickin’ but I’m here and I’ll come back soon.
