Modern photography, the thrill has gone ... not really!

We live in a world surrounded by, and created from "art" to say that it needs a specific thing or condition to exist is IMO to not really understand the nature of art and that mindset might hamper a persons ability to appreciate the world around them. I also think that people who try and fight the democratization of art are really just desperately trying to control the discourse concerning what is and what is not art, or what is good and what is bad art.

I think that photography and digital graphic arts have merged a bit to create a fuzzy boundary. Reproducing the effects that one could achieve in a darkroom vs the adding of layers, HDR and what not has made the post processing realm an art form in itself. Heck, my final pictures processed from Raw files look almost exactly like the JPGs right from the camera, only cleaner.

I think I've said it here before, 1/2 of the enjoyment for me is the physical act of photography. Getting out, using the camera, looking for the shot. I only post process to get prints and share with the community. Except for a few occasions, few outside of myself and my family would call my work art though :)
 
I've been wrestling with the same issue, Keith. If at all possible, I wait a week or so to edit my photos and that seems to help me. I don't know why that makes the editing process more fun for me but it does.


I was wrestling with it far more a year ago ... it had really got to me but eventually I worked out that I was going about it the wrong way and was putting far too much effort into images that really didn't warrant the attention in the final wash!

I'm not slagging the M8 here because I still regard it as a fine camera but my point of capture quality was far less than I now achieve with my D700 and the files used to drive me insane. That's my fault for having the wrong tool for the job in a difficult shooting environment and then trying to work around the problem in post!

An M9 would have helped but I'm a large chunk of the readies short of one of those sadly. :D
 
I spend all of work on the computer and too much of my free time on it, so the darkroom is more refreshing in a lot of ways. And it gets me off my ass. I still spend about as much time darkroom printing as I did digitally post processing, I just spend much, much more time with each photo with film. I'll still scan and digitally process my negatives, but it's a quick process just to show my stuff online. I don't worry about the details whereas I'll spend hours on one photo in the darkroom just to get it how I want it.

Being in my late 20s I grew up with technology behind me and using old film cameras is sometimes like a breath of fresh air.

-jakub
 
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