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> WHY do we do it |
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#11
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A good question Paul and it made me think why, the answer I arrived at is it's something I love doing for me for my own pleasure and it has to B&W film.
Richard |
#12
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I can fully relate to the answers given here with respect to my own darkroom work, be it on a much smaller scale than many people here. The greater satisfaction for me though has been 35mm transparency, where the dynamic of process is obviously different to dark room printing. I have though about this at length, and I think it is the very non intervention that is appealing to me. A blink of time, captured as it was. Still, after many years the thrill of holding a sheet of recently returned slides up to the light to view with a loupe is an exciting experience. My wife simply cannot understand why I would spend up to £1 a frame (after rejections) on slides when digital is 'free.' I have tried very much to like digital, but it just has not got the sense of reality for me. With a slide, the film was there; it was and is a witness to the event, and that seems to have great importance for me.
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#13
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To paraphrase Gary Winogrand, I like to see what the world looks like photographed. I'll take pictures of almost anything - some please me, some appall me, but I enjoy the process so much that it doesn't matter very much.
Do you not think that in a world where a colloquialism of 'self portrait' is named word of the year; where digital snappery is everywhere and the image is now as commonplace as air, we (that's you and me) as film-based photographers are actually keeping very small fires burning against the oncoming dark. I do. For all intents and purposes the photograph is dead, yet here we are making permanence of the beauty of light for our own pleasure. Even though I regard photography as a craft, what I've just said sounds awfully like art. Sorry for sounding so airy |
#14
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Why - part 2
It may also have something to do with old technology in other words it worked so why not use it.
I have said this before Assuming you have the capability, what would give you greater satisfaction:- Buying a flatpack table from IKEA and throwing it together with the help of a screwdriver and possibly a bit of glue. OR Crafting a table out of a piece of raw wood. Creating the correct joints and bracing to make the table a beautiful functional piece of furniture. The same applies to silver based photography, what we get is usually the result of our skills developed over a number of years and all the pleasure it has given us in that time. I won't go down the road of comparing it with digital it may ruffle a few feathers! |
#15
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As for why we need to do it, I suspect the reasons are deep and complex. Alan |
#16
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Many great answers to a great question!
For me, it's about having something I can do which isn't about my "day job". I used to write software for pay, then go home and do more of the same and tinker with computers for fun. Somewhere along the way, that stopped being fun any more. Now I just do it for pay, or if I have a very specific requirement for a personal project. I've always been a bit of a shutterbug and when I stopped spending all my time mucking around with computers I sort of drifted into taking snapshots which improved with practice. Photography gets me out of the apartment instead of sitting watching pointless brain-numbing crap on TV, makes me look at the world instead of staring right through it or ignoring it entirely in favor of a mobile device screen like most folks do. Printing in the darkroom is a honest-to-goodness craftsman-like pursuit, using one's own hands to make something real, and I enjoy that aspect as an escape from the prepackaged "convenience" world we live in now.
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http://www.paulglover.net/ |
#17
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It is the anticipation of achieving a picture that hits the spot (instinctive, various and undefinable) for me or others. This is very rarely achieved but just often enough to make the effort and aniticipation worth while.
The best photograph I have ever taken is often the one I have just exposed only to be bettered (in my mind) by the next one. This belief can be sustained until the film is developed, hence the anticipation. The satisfaction from the effort of realising any potential during printing is also a factor. Mike |
#18
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I would have to work backwards Paul to give you an answer.
I just love fine black and white prints, for me prints are items of beauty, precious, something to be cherished. It doesn't matter what I photograph it only comes to 'life' in the form of the print. The print has its own existence separate from the thing photographed it has a reality in its own right.
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"To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which will never be seen again" Ralph Waldo Emerson. Timespresent Arenaphotographers |
#19
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To answer the OP, I make photographs because I have to. Since my first darkroom printing session, when I was seven, I have been addicted and I am not in need of a cure! Bests, David www.dsallen.de
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David, d.s.allen, fotograf dsallenberlin@gmail.com http://dsallen.carpentier-galerie.de |
#20
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Good thread
I guess that like many others I need an artistic outlet, photography meets all the criteria for me, I enjoy the creative side of composition and producing original prints. I like mixing the raw chemicals together and i quite often find the finished print acceptable, which is more than I can say when I tried painting and drawing. and don't even go there with regard to my musical efforts!!
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Ian |
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