Is there value in slowing down? Yes. Digital technology has been approached far too often with a "Ready? FIRE!!! Uh, aim? WTF is 'aim'? mentality."

But is using film a solution? If you think it is, then it is for you.

I used film for 45 years. It worked fine. It was all we had. But because I navigated various career opportunities to running the digital side of a very large school portrait lab around 2000, I found parallel replacements to EVERY aspect of film photography I thought I might miss or need.

I was lucky to have the professional learning opportunities of Kodak Professional seminars, Digital Imaging Marketing Association seminars, and Photo Marketing Association International seminars from 1995 to 2010. The film world shrank as the digital world exploded, for all the right reasons. The perspective I gained in the lab and from training photographers to use digital capture instead of film capture has been very gratifying.

I still work with OLD film, by copying it to digital files. But I'll probably never see the inside of a darkroom again. I have zero interest in what, for me, is drudgery.

On the other hand, all the knowledge I gained from decades of film use transferred to digital photography just fine. I get what I want with much finer control, and more quickly, than with film. The advantages of digital bits over chemical atoms for practical imaging applications are far more numerous. The biggest one is that if you have a print, you can show it off in one place at a time, but if you digitize that image, it can be "everywhere all at once," with very little effort. And if you understand the nuances of digital printing, you can make excellent prints on a myriad of papers and other substrates.

If you value slowing down, deliberating, controlling, and thinking about what you're doing, you can train yourself to ignore all or some of the automation that you find on your digital camera. Spend more time planning, lighting, and composing the scenes you're photographing. All the same basic controls are there, just as they were half a century ago. They're just easier to use.

Interesting article (link to follow in the next post.)

Excerpts:

"According to camera maker Ilford’s 2018 global photography survey, just under a quarter of people shooting on film – including many under the age of 40 – had never used this medium before. Rather than nostalgia, they are turning to film because of its aesthetic values and a greater sense of creative control over their photos. Globally, while the film camera market is still very niche, it’s growing fast."

"Work, effort, meaning – these ideas are all interconnected for users and consumers of analogue technology. Whereas work is often seen as a means to an end, from earning a living to exercising, “analoguers” get a buzz out of the processes of setting things up, getting things right, trial and error, and building up skills."

"Over the decade or so of our research, explanations for the analogue revival have shifted from nostalgia, to the desire for something physical in a digital age, to the sense that analogue technology is creatively preferable. The idea that working within limits, and needing to overcome them, is beneficial to art creation is now accepted by many within the creative sectors."

"Is digital technology de-skilling consumers, leading to a sense of alienation? And is this overcome by using more difficult analogue devices? This is the conclusion we have come to. Certain types of “serious leisure”, including sports and creative activities, provide us with intrinsic joy even if they are frustrating to engage in until skills are developed. Using analogue technology is another way consumers can feed this desire to re-skill."