Re: Wondering

What is it
that we are doing? I love pinhole photography and am retired from
traditional photo studio work. So my sister asked me recently, "why are
you and your friends intent on taking bad pictures?" I have always
felt
we had a kind of philosophy...we were trying to see the world, or time,
or light another way. And I am not down on digital....but it is hard
to
explain to non- participants that we really are doing something, and
something important. If we sharpen the images to look like better
conventional photos, is something being lost? The mystery? The
understanding of an almost occult medium? An atempt to see what light
is
really doing as it hits and wraps around an object? What can I tell my
sister? Jean
I recently joined a camera club that is based out of a nearby retirement community and
the club is, for the most part, older and established folks that have many years
experience in film photography. They are completely smitten with all things digital and
the convenience that it brings to picture taking, (i.e. being able to view photos as you
take them, being able to dispose of unwanted pictures immediately,etc.) and gave me a
good, hard time when I came in to join ("Kid, film is dead, you need a digital camera"
and "Polaroid, didn't that go out like, 2000 years ago?"). Irony being as it is, my
homemade Polaroid pinhole camera and lenscap pinhole pictures can hold their own in
competition against digital cameras costing XXX times more. I've been complimented by a
few folks on going back to basics and staving off the advance of technology by shooting
with pinhole cameras. Do I have Luddite tendancies? No. Am I intrigued by the process of
pinhole? More than likely the case. Sometimes it's just the ritual that I enjoy, pinhole
being the antithesis of digital where it's all laid out in bits and bytes. I must confess
to using Photoshop to tweak and adjust the shortcomings (and have earned the respect of
the rest of the camera club in the process) that I have as a relatively new photgrapher.
I would suggest to your sister that perhaps taking up a pinhole camera would give her the
answer to her question, that it's the pinhole experience itself that provides the answer,
the "ritual that ends in image". There's room for all of us here, I just prefer pinhole.
I have to go work on a camera now, good luck.
Received on Tue Dec 10 11:11:35 2002