digital Detox

[boojum]

I'm reminded of a "joke" I heard someone make a while back.

Shooting large format? 1 shot, 1 keeper.
Shooting 6x9? 8 shots, 1 keeper.
Shooting 35mm? 36 shots, 1 keeper.
Shooting digital? 300 shots, 1 keeper.

As dismissive as that is, there is some truth to it. The more pressure there is to get something right first time round, the more likely it is to be right.
(...with practice and care, of course.)

Years ago when I was living in Silicon Valley I had a friend who was a professional photographer. He's the fellow I have mentioned before who carried his Leica, an M3 IIRC, in an old, beat-up WW I gas mask bag. He chose not to advertise he was carrying a camera, expensive at that. And he used to joke that said camera "had never been sullied by color film". Anyway, we were talking over coffees at Peets one day about shooting and success rates. He said when he was new to the game and naive he figured that every shot on a roll should be a good shot. Experience and maturity taught him that one in a roll of thirty-six was good. Remember that he was good enough to make a good living with his cameras. This is a professional speaking, not an amateur philosophizing. He was talking real world "get paid for it" real world.

Too follow your example of pressure, if it were true all code written under real pressure in Silicon Valley, or anywhere, would be correct first shot, straight out of the box. It is not. It always needs debugging. I have worked many nights until three or four in the morning because code had to be delivered on a deadline. The whole team worked those hours. I challenge you to provide real world examples of products prepared under extreme pressure that are always right first shot. Take all the time you need. And if you really have one, introduce it to computer coders' bosses. They will be thrilled to pieces.

 

[JeffS7444]

Ironically, analog photography (and hifi!) can literally be toxic to the user. While I never dabbled with substances such as uranium toner or pyrogallol, I used plenty of potassium ferricyanide bleach, selenium toner and (this really blew my mind when I found out), one of the active ingredients in harmless, innocent Kodak Photo-Flo 200 causes cell lysis (causes them to rupture). And it seems the same substance has been used for cleaning phonograph records! So back when I was cleaning hundreds of records using a dedicated record vacuum, I was likely inhaling an aerosol of PVC, plasticizers and octylphenoxypolyethoxyethanol - wonderful!

 

[boojum]

Ironically, analog photography (and hifi!) can literally be toxic to the user. While I never dabbled with substances such as uranium toner or pyrogallol, I used plenty of potassium ferricyanide bleach, selenium toner and (this really blew my mind when I found out), one of the active ingredients in harmless, innocent Kodak Photo-Flo 200 causes cell lysis (causes them to rupture). And it seems the same substance has been used for cleaning phonograph records! So back when I was cleaning hundreds of records using a dedicated record vacuum, I was likely inhaling an aerosol of PVC, plasticizers and octylphenoxypolyethoxyethanol - wonderful!

I had a nice stereo for analog(ue). There was the associated gear and ritual for the LP's. It was part of the analog(ue) dance. As a species we seem to like ritual a lot. The toxic sludge sometimes associated can be scary. But I suspect that the exposure was rarely enough to rise to the level of some industrial exposures. Doesn't everyone have a third arm coming out of their heads?

In the analog(ue) vs digital donnybrook it is really just a question of how one wants to spend their time. Along with that choice are the endless justifications of why. In some cases it is like hearing addicts defend their habits. Well, it is addicts defending their habits. There are addictions other than sex, drugs and rock and roll. I am sure there are. LMAO

 

[Mos6502]

How so?

You know, if you had bothered to read the post before replying, you might have found the answer already. 🤔

But back to you and pens. I think you will admit that few are good at it. And those who work with pencil always have that accessory, the eraser. And oils well, there is a medium of constant redoing.

Anybody can be good at it. You just have to actually want to be good at something. Which apparently isn't a common thing anymore. The rest of the statements are kind of nonsensical, since you may very well draw in pencil without using an eraser, if you wish. Oil painting is not really a medium of "constant redoing" in is simply a technique which provides more time to work. If you know what you want, you don't have to redo anything. If you can't make up your mind, then it affords you time to make decisions.

To say that digital creates people who are careless, clumsy, and unperceptive is pretty sweeping and pretty damning. I guess we mere mortals are damned to lives of not knowing what we are doing beforehand and condemned to existences without finesse. Interesting opinions.

Oh it's very simple. If you do not work with your hands, you will never become skilled with working with them. If you never have to do something that requires care and finesse, then you're going to be in trouble the first time you are confronted with a situation that requires it. I might go further. I think it has also made people generally terrible at things that require even the slightest modicum of spatial awareness. I've been impressed by how incredibly little physical dexterity most younger people have now, when it comes to anything from threading a nut on a bolt to parking a car. When your primary experience with manipulating physical objects is button mashing, you can't handle the real world with any sort of precision. Just loading film into a camera requires coordination, sensitivity, a little intuition, and some dexterity. It's not the use of digital mediums that causes this, it's the lack of use of physical media that results in clumsiness. It's the lack of understanding physical limits and finite resources that makes people careless.

Too follow your example of pressure, if it were true all code written under real pressure in Silicon Valley, or anywhere, would be correct first shot, straight out of the box. It is not. It always needs debugging. I have worked many nights until three or four in the morning because code had to be delivered on a deadline. The whole team worked those hours. I challenge you to provide real world examples of products prepared under extreme pressure that are always right first shot. Take all the time you need. And if you really have one, introduce it to computer coders' bosses. They will be thrilled to pieces.

Think about it this way. If you're an Olympic athlete, you don't get to redo the event until you've earned a gold medal. You've got to make your shot count. That's kind of the whole point of having skill. You can do it repeatedly, and on demand. It's not just being good "enough" to maybe do it every now and then. Otherwise a whole lot more people would have gold medals.

 

[boojum]

You know, if you had bothered to read the post before replying, you might have found the answer already. 🤔

Anybody can be good at it. You just have to actually want to be good at something. Which apparently isn't a common thing anymore. The rest of the statements are kind of nonsensical, since you may very well draw in pencil without using an eraser, if you wish. Oil painting is not really a medium of "constant redoing" in is simply a technique which provides more time to work. If you know what you want, you don't have to redo anything. If you can't make up your mind, then it affords you time to make decisions.

Oh it's very simple. If you do not work with your hands, you will never become skilled with working with them. If you never have to do something that requires care and finesse, then you're going to be in trouble the first time you are confronted with a situation that requires it. I might go further. I think it has also made people generally terrible at things that require even the slightest modicum of spatial awareness. I've been impressed by how incredibly little physical dexterity most younger people have now, when it comes to anything from threading a nut on a bolt to parking a car. When your primary experience with manipulating physical objects is button mashing, you can't handle the real world with any sort of precision. Just loading film into a camera requires coordination, sensitivity, a little intuition, and some dexterity. It's not the use of digital mediums that causes this, it's the lack of use of physical media that results in clumsiness. It's the lack of understanding physical limits and finite resources that makes people careless.

Think about it this way. If you're an Olympic athlete, you don't get to redo the event until you've earned a gold medal. You've got to make your shot count. That's kind of the whole point of having skill. You can do it repeatedly, and on demand. It's not just being good "enough" to maybe do it every now and then. Otherwise a whole lot more people would have gold medals.

Interesting. Very interesting. We have an Übermensch amongst us.

 

[Coldkennels]

To do what you speak of you have lept from analog(ue) into digital. In true analog(ue) you can develop the negative, period. [...] So once you have made that scanned leap you have left the analog(ue) world behind and are using digital editors and profiles and color curves and so on.

So what you're saying is... by shooting film, I have the best of both worlds? A physical negative, a camera that isn't thinking for me, the option to work in the darkroom to create a final image and the option of doing things "the easy way" at a computer? That seems to be what you're saying... and that's exactly the point I was making.

You can print it but if it is color I do not see how you can change it. You can dodge and burn but that is just local light levels.

Those are very much not the only options with colour film. Do you think that in all the time people were working with colour film, ways of adjusting contrast, colour balance, and so on weren't developed? Photoshop is, from top to bottom, just emulating what was being done in a darkroom for decades; even the act of compositing multiple shots with "layers" was being done in darkrooms long before we developed windowed GUIs, never mind Photoshop.

 

[boojum]

So what you're saying is... by shooting film, I have the best of both worlds? A physical negative, a camera that isn't thinking for me, the option to work in the darkroom to create a final image and the option of doing things "the easy way" at a computer? That seems to be what you're saying... and that's exactly the point I was making.


Those are very much not the only options with colour film. Do you think that in all the time people were working with colour film, ways of adjusting contrast, colour balance, and so on weren't developed? Photoshop is, from top to bottom, just emulating what was being done in a darkroom for decades; even the act of compositing multiple shots with "layers" was being done in darkrooms long before we developed windowed GUIs, never mind Photoshop.

No, I did not say that. You are saying that. But I admire your effort to make it so.

Oh, so tell me about your colo(u)r manipulation in your colo(u)r print processing. Are you practiced and good at it? Still at it?

 

[Mos6502]

I suspect this conversation would be more productive if Boojum took some time to research the topic at hand, before arrogating to himself the position of expert. We're not going to get anywhere when people haven't taken any time to look into anything and are laboring under misapprehensions, particularly when it's very basic subject matter, and shouldn't take long to look into for anybody actually interested in having a discussion in good faith.

As for the original topic, I think it's good for people change gears sometimes.

 

[wlewisiii]

While there is some of that in this thread, I am not seeing it from boojum. But then, I've only been taking pictures since 1985 so, obviously, I'm not experienced enough to know what I'm talking about.

 

[Mos6502]

While there is some of that in this thread, I am not seeing it from boojum. But then, I've only been taking pictures since 1985 so, obviously, I'm not experienced enough to know what I'm talking about.

I do however have the suspicion that you didn't watch the video before commenting. Did you watch the video before commenting?

 

[boojum]

While there is some of that in this thread, I am not seeing it from boojum. But then, I've only been taking pictures since 1985 so, obviously, I'm not experienced enough to know what I'm talking about.

Me, too, so lame. Only screwing around with cameras since '48. Not enough depth to get into this. Good thing that we have an Irwin Corey to lead us. I am relieved.

 

[Mos6502]

I suppose I don't understand the point of playing the fool and wasting everybody's time then. You asked to be told you were wrong. Several people gave information that has shown your expressed prejudices to be incorrect, and now you swing around and claim "I already know that!".

 

[wlewisiii]

I do however have the suspicion that you didn't watch the video before commenting. Did you watch the video before commenting?

Yes. I want the wasted time back.

 

[boojum]

I suppose I don't understand the point of playing the fool and wasting everybody's time then. You asked to be told you were wrong. Several people gave information that has shown your expressed prejudices to be incorrect, and now you swing around and claim "I already know that!".

What an inconvenient and inconsiderate bunch we are. We exhibit little to no shame or respect. Hopeless, I'd say we are hopeless. Ingrates, too.

 

[Mos6502]

Yes. I want the wasted time back.

Romantic foolishness without the romance to continue to spend time on this discussion then.

 

[boojum]

Romantic foolishness without the romance to continue to spend time on this discussion then.

My mistake. I thought it was a didactic monologue from our better. Wrong again. Drat. I'll have to work on being more clever, just to keep up.

 

[bulevardi]

The closest I've come to a "digital detox" was my recent trip to Europe, where I was without cell phone connectivity for 2 1/2 weeks. While I used my phone for navigation (downloaded maps) and as a camera, the lack of cell connectivity plus the six hour time difference between my location and my office made the trip much more relaxing. (Unfortunately, coming back home to Florida this past weekend, cleaning up after Hurricane Helene and getting ready for Hurricane Milton has been rather less relaxing.)

As far as a digital camera detox. I only have one dedicated digital camera left and I only shoot it occasionally. So, not much to detox from. I find if I feel like making photographs with a dedicated camera, I usually want it to be an all manual film camera. This isn't really rational—I don't develop my own film or print in a darkroom, so I wind up with digital files anyway. But shooting with my old film cameras makes me happy, so that's what I use.

In a "digital detox", there's aswel a difference between shooting analog/digital and being continuously offline/online.


I'm currently doing some kind of social media detox this month, where I tried to abandon Instagram (and TikTok) as I was spending too much time on these platforms.
I abandoned it for almost 4 weeks now, and the first days I noticed my brain started to push me trying to get me back.
A bit like when I stop drinking coffee for more then a day I start getting headache.
Some kind of "fear of missing out", while at the same time realizing I actually don't miss 90% of the the superficial things happening there.

I went to a cool event in the last weeks, where I made a picture and thought: "oh no, now I can't share it in my stories".... mm, and sharing it later in March is totally irrelevant. So I sent it just to a couple of people who were interested in that event via Whatsapp, because I came to think that 'happiness is only real when shared'.

I was commuting to work this week and saw a wonderful sunrise. My habit is to get my phone and instantly capture the moment.
But now I thought... well... why would I take this picture if I'm not going to share it with anyone? Or should I wait until next month and post it after my detox? That's ridiculous.
So why would I take a picture... (ok yes I could show it at work to my coworkers, or at home to my family), but I'm not planning to spread it on socials.
It is like a tree that falls down in a forest and there's no one to hear it... ok there's the sound, but sames goes for: there's this picture, and you don't have the audience to see it.

Let's splits us in 2 groups of people here.
Those who want to show their work to the world, and the others who don't feel the need to.


The first group does it because they enjoy appreciation, feedback or interation, or they have an unstoppable urge to share it.
Quoting Christopher McCandless: “Happiness is only real, when shared.”

The second group never shows or bring out their work. For some reason they don't feel the need to, or are happy with themselves as is.


I am -alas- in the first group, and I know a bunch of people from the second group and I try to understand them. Maybe you also know some, observed them and tried figuring out the why's and how's....

In the first group, it is true that you get a dopamine shot every time you get applause or feedback or like.
That makes you want to show off with something again and again. Not only because you made a new series of art, or not because you're the narcissist in need for attention, but because the Social Media apps are made to get you addicted to dopamine.

Dopamine not only ensures that there are gambling/drug/sex/shopping addicts and such, but also that you become addicted to habits that you never before saw as harmful, or saw as normal everyday behavior.
Our brains become wired to always want to get feedback/interaction/likes and therefore have an urge to want to create content and put it online.
There are already several books about this, which I would like to read when I have more time.


The second group somehow does not need that.
I know a couple of wonderful musicians who play daily in their room, but never felt the need to register or record it, or put it online somewhere, or play for an audience in a live setting. No, they're happy just to play for their own.
I know some sports people who just run already all their lives, for themselves and their health, and don't tell others. And then there are the Strava-people who need to show off their stats and tell everyone each week how much they ran, just to tell how good they are. (That's the same group 2 vs group 1.)

Imagine that The Beatles or The Rolling Stones had a mindset like people from the second group, and they only played for theirselves in their rehearsal space and never recorded anything and never played it outside their rehearsal space, for an audience.
Nobody would ever know what they made. Nobody would ever get inspired by them.

Why do some artists come out of their personal space and show it to the outside world? Because they need a podium? Because they need attention? Because they enjoy someone else enjoys? Because other reasons?

I'm currently doing a sort of digital detox this month, with apps like Instagram. An app I'm using for 10 years now, very continuously. I sometimes took a detox break before (on holidays), but this time it's different, for other reasons, and I'm getting more philosophical about it. My brains also tells me I'm a bit addicted, yes, there there, I admit.


To get back to my example: why would I capture that sunrise, to show it to people who don't care? Because: not much people care.
It's a very existential question to me.
Why would we do what we do.
I finally didn't take that picture. I also thought: what's the reason why I was here? To not take that picture?

After my detox I'd love to become more like the ones in the second group, enjoying myself, the process of creating... authenticity... but at the end I'd sit there with my creations... and if I put it online to show, it feels like I'm the attention whore just doing that for likes?

 

[Disappointed_Horse]

Thought provoking post. I am definitely in your second group. I have not used social media much at all in the last 12 years or so and I don't miss it.

I remember when I was a teenager I read a book by a controversial football player (which is odd because I'm not and never have been a big sports fan). However, one phrase in that book made a big impression on me: "Only people you care about have opinions you care about."

I take pictures for myself. If I make a photograph I really like, I might make a print and hang it on the wall. I might share it with family or friends (and by friends I include internet acquaintances at forums like RFF and a few other, as well as a couple of photography-related Discord servers I belong to). But as to what a bunch of strangers—even an infinite number of strangers on the internet—might think about my photos, I really don't care.

 

[JoeV]

I think this thread, and RFF in general, constitutes “social media.”

 

[Retro-Grouch]

I think this thread, and RFF in general, constitutes “social media.”

It does. But the quality of cat pictures here is so much higher than anywhere else! 😉