I traded cameras with a friend this week. How exciting! This means that I'm using a Nikon D70 and my friend has the pleasure of using the precious Mamiya 645pro. I've realized a few things...
1. Digital is extensive. You can take a lot of pictures, which is great for practicing. You can look at your image in an instant. You can use auto focus ;) I lured some friends into my "living room-turned glamour studio", with the promise of stunning renditions of themselves...and, vino. The outcome: questionable stunning-ness., unquestionable entertainment. Here are some out takes:
that's brooklyn, seattle and chi-town, at your service.
he's charming. really.
hoopy. loopy.
she's good at what she does.
so is she.
2. I like what I know and I don't know Nikon so well. The Mamiya is intuitive, but then again, I've been using it for years. Practice with the 'new' technology will help, I'm certain of it. But will I ever get over the fact that photography, a medium utterly dependent on light, is engaged in a serious affair with the pixel...a human-generated grain of film? If you know me, you know how much I appreciate science. I can't believe how amazingly well our algorithms have come to truly interpreting light. However, film is still documenting light. Digital is still computing light. Legitimate or otherwise, I feel like this makes me less of a photographer. Does it? Let's think...
The Portland Art Museum's most recent exhibit was a photographic series,
Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957. It documented the gorge and its transitions, both social and geographical, that came in large part with the addition of two major dams.
Carleton Watkins was prolific in this exhibit. He was hired by construction companies to document the landscape before (and during) the impending changes. At the time of his early trips to the gorge (approx. 1867), photography was considered a science. It was not an art...and that's no surprise. Photography was new on the scene and far from accessible to the masses. Cameras were large and cumbersome, not to mention "negatives", as we know them, did not exist. Photographers were curious chemists who experimented with light sensitive chemicals on glass and metal plates. That being said, those whose images we admire today are few...and therefore special. Making a beautiful image in 1867, in the rugged topography and weather in the Columbia Gorge was mastered by Watkins. He had vision and tenacity; strength and scientific know-how.
He was shooting with a mammoth plate camera. This is an image of a camera similar to his.
A person must be admired or at least appreciated for making such striking images under such challenging conditions. One had to have a true mastery of science and art...he didn't have light meters, auto-focus, instant previews; he had to use intuition, a keen understanding of light and deep knowledge of chemistry.
this is one of my favorites. columbia gorge b/w mosier and the dalles.
Maybe roll film replaced glass plates with the same confidence that pixels are taking over roll film. I guess the fact remains that there will always be a necessary intuition behind any good photograph or photographer. What changes is the nature of the intuition. Could Watkins have made a successful picture with a Mamiya 645? Could Terry Richardson with a mammoth albumen? Can Ani Nelson with a Nikon D70?
I think we all can...in due time.
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