emraphoto
Veteran
Donald Weber
Noah Addis
Eugene Richards
Brent Foster
Ikuru Kuwajima
Erica Mcdonald
Yoav Galai
Q. Sakamaki
I don't buy it that there's no soul. Are you really looking?
Noah Addis
Eugene Richards
Brent Foster
Ikuru Kuwajima
Erica Mcdonald
Yoav Galai
Q. Sakamaki
I don't buy it that there's no soul. Are you really looking?
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emraphoto
Veteran
Agreed! Addario, Pelegrin, Anderson and the list goes on
peterm1
Veteran
Sorry, no offence to anyone but I must admit I am getting tired of this almost constant stream of film = good : digital = bad threads (or at least threads with that implication) that seem to permeate this forum recently. Its really getting very boring and seems like nothing so much as old guy cynicism (.....OK I was going to say old f*rt) and makes the forum members seem like a bunch of luddites. Every day there is a new post traversing the same tired old ground.
Weren't the old blokes saying the same in the 1920's when Leica and Contax introduced their radical 35mm format and these gained ground over the old plate cameras. Picture this........."These new so called photographers are nothing so much as happy snappers. All the time shooting without a thought - no consideration is given to proper blah blah blah. You are not a photographer unless you carry around a 20 pound camera plus glass plates that take 10 seconds for each exposure. Then you will really have to stop and think about what you are doing blah blah blah."
Perhaps the correct way to characterize such threads is to say
"Ahhhhh, they sure dont make nostalgia like they used to!"
Here is my two cents worth------------Both film and digital are good. Full stop.
Sorry if I sound cranky. I have not had my coffee yet. And besides, perhaps the truth is that if others are cynical old f*rts, I am a cranky old f*rt.
Weren't the old blokes saying the same in the 1920's when Leica and Contax introduced their radical 35mm format and these gained ground over the old plate cameras. Picture this........."These new so called photographers are nothing so much as happy snappers. All the time shooting without a thought - no consideration is given to proper blah blah blah. You are not a photographer unless you carry around a 20 pound camera plus glass plates that take 10 seconds for each exposure. Then you will really have to stop and think about what you are doing blah blah blah."
Perhaps the correct way to characterize such threads is to say
"Ahhhhh, they sure dont make nostalgia like they used to!"
Here is my two cents worth------------Both film and digital are good. Full stop.
Sorry if I sound cranky. I have not had my coffee yet. And besides, perhaps the truth is that if others are cynical old f*rts, I am a cranky old f*rt.
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_mark__
Well-known
In addition I would add; that rather than lacking soul a large proportion of contemporary photography lacks bravery, whether it is the bravery to confront a difficult subject matter or the bravery to remain true to your own visual style. It is often much easier to shy away from it or conform to the opinion of others. Great work most often comes from taking risks and being honest.
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x-ray
Veteran
I couldn't agree more. I also believe nostalgia plays a part too but I also believe the many images have become so processed in photoshop that they've become very cold and sterile. Part of the beauty of the better work from the past was the technical imperfections like grain and the "film look". Photoshop / digital has created unrealistic images that are simply too perfect. Lenses are too good and even film is near the point of too perfect but at least we can still make images using old style emulsions (efke / adox /foma etc.) with vintage lenses and developer formulas from the past. to me scanning the neg direct kills some of that look and printing wet on fine SG paper retains much more of it.
Rick Waldroup
Well-known
"It's a sad fact that most digital 'shooters' don't care about composition, don't evaluate a scene, don't interact with the object. Most of them just keep firing away while passing a scene."
This is complete and utter nonsense.
I shot film for over 30 years. I shoot only digital now. I have changed very little in the way I compose a shot, or in the way I shoot.
If anything, shooting with digital cameras has opened up new vistas and new territories to discover. It's a brave new world and I want to embrace it, not run from it and pine for yesteryear. A digital camera is just another tool to capture an image, nothing more and nothing less.
This is complete and utter nonsense.
I shot film for over 30 years. I shoot only digital now. I have changed very little in the way I compose a shot, or in the way I shoot.
If anything, shooting with digital cameras has opened up new vistas and new territories to discover. It's a brave new world and I want to embrace it, not run from it and pine for yesteryear. A digital camera is just another tool to capture an image, nothing more and nothing less.
emraphoto
Veteran
i ask again, have you really looked?
emraphoto
Veteran
how did you arrive at the "most" part? was there a study done? is there information available supporting this?
JoeV
Thin Air, Bright Sun
Cameras don't create images, photographers do. So, if there is anything valid to the argument that the quality of photography has gone downhill, it's the fault of the person(s) pushing the button, not the gear (and I'm not even certain that argument is valid; perhaps it's just the immediate access to countless images of lackluster quality).
With the tools we have available today -- the best of analog and digital technology -- we live in a unique time in history when there is zero excuse for not enjoying a revolution in great photography. Twenty years from now there may be no more film to put in our film cameras, at which point they will become relics, museum pieces. But for now, we can enjoy, and exploit, both.
If anything, there is a lack of creative vision and merciless, critical editing. We're inundated with cr*p, not because of digital camera and post-capture technology, but because of the immediate access to the world of media, both as suppliers and consumers of imagery. Anybody can post anything online, regardless of quality or merit or artistic vision; I'm guilt of that, I'm certain.
~Joe
With the tools we have available today -- the best of analog and digital technology -- we live in a unique time in history when there is zero excuse for not enjoying a revolution in great photography. Twenty years from now there may be no more film to put in our film cameras, at which point they will become relics, museum pieces. But for now, we can enjoy, and exploit, both.
If anything, there is a lack of creative vision and merciless, critical editing. We're inundated with cr*p, not because of digital camera and post-capture technology, but because of the immediate access to the world of media, both as suppliers and consumers of imagery. Anybody can post anything online, regardless of quality or merit or artistic vision; I'm guilt of that, I'm certain.
~Joe
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gho
Well-known
To put it short: I think photography today is up and well. It is true, we are flooded with images, but this does not mean, that photographic activitiy as a whole has become soulless. I am sure there are a lot of creative people out there, taking great, 'soulful' photographs, be it on film, digital or whatever.
Maybe you are just looking at the wrong place? What is the soul of photography?
Maybe you are just looking at the wrong place? What is the soul of photography?
Bob Michaels
nobody special
Sometimes one sentence summarizes the best response to some old tired arguments. I might delete "digital" as a qualifying adverb and allow the phrase to apply to all cameras.
pakeha
Well-known
Sometimes one sentence summarizes the best response to some old tired arguments. I might delete "digital" as a qualifying adverb and allow the phrase to apply to all cameras.
seconded,
` so much style without substance and so much stuff without style, hard to recognise the real thing that comes along once and a while' *
translated, there is so much more around these days, but there is , if you look some soul and style still about.
* not mine, from some song i remember, probably 80`s rock
seconded,
` so much style without substance and so much stuff without style, hard to recognise the real thing that comes along once and a while' *
translated, there is so much more around these days, but there is , if you look some soul and style still about.
* not mine, from some song i remember, probably 80`s rock
aizan
Veteran
make haste to the bookshop!
back alley
IMAGES
there's a lot bad smell in this thread...
charjohncarter
Veteran
Merry Christmas, Roger, I have gone through some of my loser images from way back and all of a sudden the don't look that bad, (maybe not that good either). This is from my low quality camera period, which I have gone through many times, and am going through again, (this one is a 104 Instamatic about 1964-5 with Ektachrome):
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robklurfield
eclipse
Here's a scan from a contact sheet from a roll I shot in about 1984. It has a lot of soul. Wait, no. That's not soul. That's mold growing on the contact sheet because it was stored in a flooded basement. Soul, that's something different. I don't have a horse in the race. You can all pick up where you left off.
bmattock
Veteran
raid
Dad Photographer
Today, as we were driving along the beach, my oldest daughter asked: "who was the first woman ever on Earth?" I thought ... maybe Eve? My youngest daughter had this response: "It was Lady Gaga!"
I thought %$#@!
I thought %$#@!
amateriat
We're all light!
Soul is hard to define, almost impossible to nail down, and too damned easy to argue about (as we have demonstrated). A camera, like a musical instrument, can help facilitate the creation of a work that some or many of us might agree has "soul", but it can't embody it. So a Leica M7 is more or less on the same plane in this regard as, say, an M9. (I don't claim that big-ass dSLRs, for example, necessarily deny soul; I just think they suck for a lot of other reasons, starting with their sheer size. 
)
Yes, there's the issue of TV and the Web; there are also all those camera-phones and Flips and games and apps and all this motion that keeps us glues to all kinds of screens, big and small, which scatters our attention and reduces our perceived time to pay rapt attention to one thing... a sonata, a painting, a sense of time flowing past without our hurtling through it with grim determination.
(Okay, I should lay off the Rilke late at night, but you might get my point.)
Soul takes a little time, even if the image you just took, so full of same, took a fraction of a second. It's the thought behind the picture, conscious or otherwise, deep or fleeting, that really makes the difference. Soul doesn't require Big Thoughts, at least not all the time. But thought does count. So does feeling. And the two need not be diametrically opposed.
I much prefer the boxes I put film into. Leave me stranded with something digital*, however, and I'd cope.
- Barrett
(*But please, please, please, don't leave me alone with a EOS-1D anything. They make my teeth itch.)
)Yes, there's the issue of TV and the Web; there are also all those camera-phones and Flips and games and apps and all this motion that keeps us glues to all kinds of screens, big and small, which scatters our attention and reduces our perceived time to pay rapt attention to one thing... a sonata, a painting, a sense of time flowing past without our hurtling through it with grim determination.
(Okay, I should lay off the Rilke late at night, but you might get my point.)
Soul takes a little time, even if the image you just took, so full of same, took a fraction of a second. It's the thought behind the picture, conscious or otherwise, deep or fleeting, that really makes the difference. Soul doesn't require Big Thoughts, at least not all the time. But thought does count. So does feeling. And the two need not be diametrically opposed.
I much prefer the boxes I put film into. Leave me stranded with something digital*, however, and I'd cope.
- Barrett
(*But please, please, please, don't leave me alone with a EOS-1D anything. They make my teeth itch.)
Ezzie
E. D. Russell Roberts
So said Socrates, some years ago.........
And kids today have no respect for their elders.
......
It would seem we've been on a downward spiral for quite som time