Bill Pierce
Well-known
The one constant criticism I hear directed at digital photography is “People take too many pictures.” That’s silly. I would replace it with “People don’t throw away enough bad attempts at pictures." There is no inherent sin in pushing the button. It would be stupid not to if there was a chance that there was a good picture possible.
I do think it is possible to keep too many “possibilities.” But that’s preferable to throwing away ‘keepers.” No question that we shoot less with film. It costs money. There is a significant delay between taking and seeing the picture which tends to keep us from pressing the button until the moment was just right. And, of course, that is added to by the fact that your film load is 36 or 20 or 12 or 8 frames - unless you are shooting sheet film holders which have a very low score on the frames per second chart (which somehow never stopped the folks who shot sports with Graflexes and Graphics).
Should that keep us from taking advantage of the film equivalent of an endless roll and a fast, motorized drive? That would be silly. I’m not suggesting you should spray shoot a landscape, and I have seen photographers shoot so rapidly and copiously that I seriously doubted whether they were really looking at the subject. But that’s their problem.
The real problem with high volume digital photography is the same one as high volume film photography. If you look at Bresson’s contact sheet, he shot a lot of frames and selected very few for printing. I think Gary Winogrand had it right when he didn’t select the frames he would print until enough time has passed that he thought he was making a more objective selection.
There comes a time when that giant RAID box starts of fill up and slow down. I think it’s then that you go into your digital files and carefully discard a few. I have to confess, I throw away obvious misses right away, something that doesn’t work with strips of film. And every once in awhile I look at much older pictures. It’s easy to do on a computer. I see memories that should be kept. I see a few rather good pictures. But I also look at images and say, “What did you think you were doing?” And I do something that was unheard of in my film days. I erase the image. I’ve even contemplated throwing away some negatives.
Your thoughts (including “Is Pierce an idiot?”).
I do think it is possible to keep too many “possibilities.” But that’s preferable to throwing away ‘keepers.” No question that we shoot less with film. It costs money. There is a significant delay between taking and seeing the picture which tends to keep us from pressing the button until the moment was just right. And, of course, that is added to by the fact that your film load is 36 or 20 or 12 or 8 frames - unless you are shooting sheet film holders which have a very low score on the frames per second chart (which somehow never stopped the folks who shot sports with Graflexes and Graphics).
Should that keep us from taking advantage of the film equivalent of an endless roll and a fast, motorized drive? That would be silly. I’m not suggesting you should spray shoot a landscape, and I have seen photographers shoot so rapidly and copiously that I seriously doubted whether they were really looking at the subject. But that’s their problem.
The real problem with high volume digital photography is the same one as high volume film photography. If you look at Bresson’s contact sheet, he shot a lot of frames and selected very few for printing. I think Gary Winogrand had it right when he didn’t select the frames he would print until enough time has passed that he thought he was making a more objective selection.
There comes a time when that giant RAID box starts of fill up and slow down. I think it’s then that you go into your digital files and carefully discard a few. I have to confess, I throw away obvious misses right away, something that doesn’t work with strips of film. And every once in awhile I look at much older pictures. It’s easy to do on a computer. I see memories that should be kept. I see a few rather good pictures. But I also look at images and say, “What did you think you were doing?” And I do something that was unheard of in my film days. I erase the image. I’ve even contemplated throwing away some negatives.
Your thoughts (including “Is Pierce an idiot?”).
