I approach photography with habits I developed (no pun intended) many years ago in the paleozoic era. The great process -- film, paper, chemistry -- involved an enormous amount of time, and it is that very flow of time that engrosses me to this day. Ah, you say, but digital photography is instant; it is a revelation of the immediate, a celebration of this very moment. Yes, but... no.
I will often make an iPhone image, for example, and work in what is essentially real-time, using some favorite apps to make quick interpretations. I love doing that, exploring what's going on in my mind before the image has grown cold. But just as often, with the passage of only a day or two, I will find that very same treatment artificial and boring. It lacks the element of time.
Back in digital's early days, when each year brought forth quantum leaps in the technology of image quality, a photographer I knew told me why he thought it important to always buy the latest camera. It was all about capturing as much information as possible, not necessarily for the right-now, but because in the future there will always be new software to enable an interpretation of an image that may not be possible, even imaginable, today. Best be able to meet the future fully clothed.
So much of that new software is right here, right now. I personally find myself using onOne Perfect Suite nearly all the time; it progresses and evolves right along with me. I go back over files months, sometimes years, after I made them, and see them brand new all over again. When you wonder "why the heck didn't I see that before?" it's because, if you're being honest with yourself, it's not enough just to be clever with Photoshop. All art is communion, mainly with yourself, and that great joy of discovery happens when that image you made excites one last photon of memory from the birth of the universe. No shit, you and I were there.
I took pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment