One of the things I dearly missed when not camping due to the
inconvenience of lugging around large format photo gear was the rich experience
of being alone in the woods at two o'clock in the morning. That's a perfect time
to give yourself a serious case of the heebie jeebies, lemme tell 'ya. But as
it turns out, between chasing light with predawn wakeups and the lateness with
which I've generally crawled into the tent after a day's worth of fieldwork, when
camping this year I've mostly slept right through.
Still, staying up late has
had occasional advantages...
*
The advent and ongoing development of digital image capture
revolutionized photography and is well on the way to fundamentally altering our
approach to the visual world.
I'm no Luddite and though this gig is pretty much all about the film,
as a one time member of the 1st commercial digital imaging department in a
major metropolitan industry, I learned long ago that resistance to
technological change is ultimately futile. The only way to survive is to get
with the program. Many businesses didn't do that and now an industry is forever
gone.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot not to like about digital
photography. For one thing, the ease of use has excised nearly all the necessity
for craft. Then fundamentally, the way we view the world through our pictures
has changed from the tactile, translucent
experience of standing awestruck before an image captured via natural light
through emulsion and printed in continuous tone, to that same light translated
by numerical approximation and via hard-edged pixels then thrown backlit through
a screen.
I can't help but think this has made smaller, what once was often
inspiring.
And if what I've seen at art galleries & such during my travels
around the Basin is an accurate indication of the public appetite, then as a
photographer I'm truly one dead duck. That's 'cause mostly what I've seen
offered for sale is imagery so heavily processed, so intensely manipulated as to have lost any real
connection to both our natural world and the authentic moment in time when the
shutter's released.
This stuff isn't really photography at all, but rather graphic art. And
with that I can't compete.
If that's what pleases the image buying audience these days, then in a
short span of time, the distinction earned by working in large & medium
format film will no longer even be recognized. And to the extent a thing goes
unrecognized, appreciation of it becomes that much more unlikely.
So it goes. And that's why we're together on this road to begin with,
after all.
But contrary to what it may seem, I'm not here today to bury digital, but
rather to praise it. Along with all the lousy stuff that most revolutions bring
and that none of us are gonna forestall for more than a moment anyway, digital
has allowed for some truly amazing things.
I mean, just trying doing this
with traditional film and good luck with that:
Now, I don't imagine you'll capture the like of these with your
stinkin' phones, but my Toy Canon's merely
a consumer grade, entry level SLR sporting crappy glass, which means that anyone
out there with even a decently equipped digital camera can do this too.
So here's digital photo tip number One and Only, straight from an old
film dog to the rest of you out there in the modern world:
Secure your camera to a tripod. Manually set the thing to f5.6 (depth
of field being unnecessary as the Universe supplies all you'll need), ISO 6400,
25 seconds exposure. You'll have to experiment some with the focus, as auto
focus won't cut it and most cheap lenses aren't actually sharp at infinity when
ratcheted down to the symbol that designates it.
And, of course, you'll have to put yourself someplace where you can
actually see the night sky in all its glory.
Then point that digital magic wand of yours to a favorite place in the
heavens and shoot...
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