Ah, mind-taxing time again. - Marvin
Nothing like a thread of this sort to make me go on a milk-and-cookie run (no cookies here, so have to put on shoes and head to the all-night place across the street) and fortify myself for a reply...
Avotius: I don't know if you're familiar with the
Dogma 95 movement in the world of cinema. This came about at a moment when the world of cinema, like still photography, was experiencing seismic shifts in technology, and concerned itself with what it perceived as the diminution of the craft by a boatload of slick, big-budget smoke and mirrors. While I have thought this movement more than a little childish at its extremes (CGI in movies, IMO, isn't exactly
evil, just terribly tacky most of the time it's used), I think the movement was important in putting forth the question of what cinema is, and isn't, and can be, and too often doesn't get the chance to be.
Like the world of moving pictures, still photography is based on, and steeped in, technology and its changes. Movies have gone through the silent era, to "talkies", to color (one of the tenets of Dogma 95 is to
always shoot in color, because that's based in "reality": raise your hand if you buy this one!), to wide-screen (from CinemaScope to IMAX), to 3D, to digital shooting and projection. Over here, in the still-image world, we've been dealing with the same thing, and haveing the same arguments about art and aesthetics. We've had our own Dogma 95 cliques over the last century (f/64, anyone?), and while the extremes of such movements could devolve into the silly and pointless, the argument sticks at least a little to the psychic ribs of those of us with a minute to listen and ponder.
How I work with images, and ultimately conjure them into prints, is my business, just as your methods are yours. When an image works, it just works; when it simply sucks, no amount of explaining makes it otherwise (in fact, further explanation usually makes it look all the worse). For me, though, the work I create isn't simply something spun from Gossamer onto film or paper: it's a record. A record of where I was, and when, and why. Photography only gets certain facts straight, and in 2D, no less, but it's a pretty good record-keeper nonetheless. This, for me, is important.
Not that I'm just into dry-record-keeping snaps (nothing wrong with that): there is the matter of reording things (hopefully) as I saw and felt them, and that's long been a tricky business. The advent of computers, scanners, and Photoshop have allowed others to get farther away from what they consider "reality", but the same technologies have allowed me to get
closer to my reality than I ever could before. In another thread last week, I mentioned my regarding Photoshop as a "transcription" device for my scanned images, a more-precise means to get down as much as I can from that chip of plastic and emulsion. Sometimes, and image can come straight out of the scanner, without any other twiddling, and be the image i want. Sometimes, I need to tweak it: levels, curves, a bit of unsharp mask. One method (or non-method) doesn't pull rank over the other, just as in the wet darkroom.
And, of course, the final judge of what works is
me, and me alone. I truly couldn't give a rat's ass what's "current" in the world of photography (maybe this an affliction that hits when you pass 40?). I mainly want to stay vital to myself, and show a little of that around for feedback, good or bad.
No dogma required. But I wouldn't object to developing a secret RFf handshake, just for fun.
🙂
- Barrett
