Grouchy

[peterm1]

And it takes both much less intellect and much less effort than being positive. It probably takes less time, too.

Real grouchy cannot be learned over night. It takes many years of dedicated practice. Just ask my wife about me.

 

[Canyongazer]

"Greatness is always improbable.
Petty and dull, that is probable."

Tao Te Ching

 

[Retro-Grouch]

Remember the Three Precepts of the Path of Grouch-ness:

1) Nothing is ever as good as it used to be.

2) Everything is only going to get worse.

3) You kids get offa my lawn!

 

[CMur12]

I've struggled with digital in concept, based on outmoded standards derived from the limitations of film.

It occurs to me, however, that digital finally brings to photography the same sort of plasticity that is common to other arts.

The painter doesn't have to render a landscape as it appears before them; they're free to create their own vision of the scene, and no one considers that cheating.

As a film photographer, my struggle to accept digital was the issue of "truth." When I saw a digital image, I would wonder how much of what I saw was capture and how much was manipulation, and thus inauthentic. I guess I have just gradually come to accept this and to recognize the greatly expanded expressive potential of digital.

I can't yet see myself abandoning film altogether - and perhaps I never will - but I now see digital as a worthy form of photographic expression.

- Murray

 

[peterm1]

Remember the Three Precepts of the Path of Grouch-ness:

1) Nothing is ever as good as it used to be.

2) Everything is only going to get worse.

3) You kids get offa my lawn!

You forgot the final one (which is really a corollary of 1)

"4) They don't make nostalgia like they used to."

 

[Bill Blackwell]

No question - digital has changed photography, but has it made it better? ... Can digital produce better prints than film? ...

Initially, no (I speak as one who shoots the 35mm format exclusively). But since 24MP has been the standard, there's no question whatsoever that printing from a digital capture is better in every respect. Digital is cleaner, has less grain, and is more flexible compared to film.

In fact the only disadvantage I can see in shooting digital is the probable obsolescence of file types.

 

[Vince Lupo]

Vince, "grouchy" is a way of life, not a stage or mood. The true grouch never strays from the path.

Many thanks for the clarification - I don’t know that I’ll ever become a member of that exclusive club (would they even want the likes of me?), but you never know….

Speaking for myself, I think digital has only made my photography and problem-solving skills better. I definitely recall a number of older/more experienced professional photographers back in the late 1990s-early 2000s who simply got out of the business because they “didn’t want to be sitting in front of a damned computer all day” and who didn’t want to make the move to shooting with digital cameras and try to learn new ways of doing things (maybe there was also a sense of feeling ‘forced’ to make the shift and they simply didn’t want to run their long-established businesses on someone else’s terms). At the time I was just only 4-5 years into building my commercial photography business in my newly-adopted/temporarily adopted country when I had to make the switch. I say ‘had to’ because that’s what my clients were demanding, and it was either make the switch or lose the clients. Admittedly it was a bit tough at the beginning as I made the eventual shift from shooting film, to a hybrid system (shoot film and then scan) to finally full digital across the board, but for the ‘paying’ work I’m glad I made the switch. More recently I was ‘compelled’ to add drone photography and video to my repertoire, and in a lot of ways I’m glad my clients forced my hand, so to speak (I did however put my foot down with Matterport!). Overall I think my work is better, the process is more streamlined and I’ve become a better photographer and problem-solver for it. I suppose the only downside (if I can call it that) is that the clients are now expecting the work to be turned around quicker and they expect things can easily be ‘PhotoShopped’ with the simple push of a button (that sometimes requires a bit of a discussion!) but it’s just become part of the ‘process’ and I’ve learned to live with that. No big deal.

I think for personal work it’s been beneficial as well. Unlike some of the commenters here (Bill included) and elsewhere in the Forum, I think I’m able to make digital prints that are as good as, if not better than my darkroom prints (and I think I was a pretty competent darkroom and historic processes printer, and was fortunate to have learned from the best instructors in both undergrad and grad schools). And I think I’m as selective in what I print as I was back in the darkroom days, so the ‘quantity’ hasn’t necessarily increased. They’re exhibited and sometimes sold, and honestly I quite enjoy the entire process. I think one of the things that I really like is the ‘immediacy’ of digital, though to me it’s all photography no matter what the process or method is. As a result I don’t particularly place ‘digital photography’ in its own special box.

In recent years I’ve gotten back into film and now glass plate, so in a sense my photographic journey has come full circle yet moved forward at the same time. Funny thing - just when you think there’s nothing more to learn, you realize that you still have a very long way to go.

So honestly, I don’t think that I’ll ever become a member of the Grouchy Club, at least I hope not. And after close personal scrutiny I’ve concluded you wouldn’t want me anyways.

 

[jsrockit]

Digital is more convenient and certainly makes it easier to go from in camera photograph to finished print … since you can print while watching TV in your studio apartment if you want. That said, photography is easier for the masses, but harder for the artist. Even harder for the every day working professional… but I’m with the others, great photography continues to be hard and the cliches are even more rampant than in the past. It’s very hard to be original. It always has been. However, the internet makes people aware of what the world is doing. What you think might be original is quickly shown not to be by some basic research.