A New Old Way

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Like most photographers today, I shoot digital. I do have a film SLR and I use it from time to time, but I'm not as patient as I'd like to be. Also, I've never worked in a darkroom. Instead, I send out my film for processing and printing.

Back in the late 80's when I attended SUNY Oswego, I wanted to take the photography courses, but I could barely afford to pay for laundry as it was. I was a dual major in English and Art, but took illustration, painting, and drawing. Those supplies were expensive enough. I knew from friends in the art department that photography was not a cheap pursuit. It wasn't a huge disappointment or anything. I just thought it was a cool medium that I thought I'd want to explore some day.


I feel now as if I have somehow cheated, jumping right over film photography and landing in the world of the digital darkroom, where things seem...easier. I don't know if they are; that's just my perception. Sitting at the computer working in Photoshop doesn't seem as blood-and-sweat as standing in a cramped darkroom, dodging and burning, mixing chemicals, and drip-drying prints. I would guess that that feeling has something to do with the ingrained guilt of growing up Catholic -- you feel bad even when there's nothing to feel bad about.

Some day, I'd like to try out the darkroom experience, just for the sake of it. There is that idealized image of the lone artist laboring away under a red light, watching as his/her work fades into being.

I'd like to try that and see just how wrong that idealized image is.

I want to go "old school," as they say, to some degree. I know how important it is to study those who came before you. Like learning blues riffs on the guitar or copying word for word your favorite writers in order to get a better sense of their style, their cadence.

Other older techniques I'm interested in -- going backward to go forward? -- are pinhole photography and lomography. I love the gloomy, fuzzy quality of older photographs. The over-saturated colors of 1970's pocket cameras. The soft focus of the earliest cameras.

I recently bought a zone plate from Pinhole Resource. Basically, it's a camera body cap with a tiny hole drilled in the middle. It's more complicated than that, but you get the idea. I went out shooting by the Black River in Watertown and these are some of the shots. At f/45, the DOF is enormous and of course, the necessary shutter speeds are slow. It was fun. Kind of the best of both worlds -- a simple lens (if you can even call it that), combined with the instant review of digital. It's a beautiful thing.

G