pico_digoliardi Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 This newfangled "film" (or "flimsy") media is just so wrong in so many ways. It does not run or merge like wet plate, hence it does not reflect natures dynamic way, indeed gravity, which can subtlety alter outcomes to remind us of our humble place in the Way of Things. Film is profane. Anyone can retouch film. And I suspect it will become commonplace. With film anyone can make a picture. And I suspect such will be so. With film the Lords of commercial processing take over the process so that the art and craft of wet plate processing is lost; photography becomes profane, commonplace. And it gets worse. The introduction of the exposure timing mechanism (tentatively termed a "shutter") suggests further alienation of humankind from The Moment, automating exposure, removing the profound variability of our nature. This is the lowest moment in the history of Photography. I cannot imagine how it could possibly degenerate further. Pico in the wayback machine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt_needham Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Roll film is for pray-n-spray photogs. Enlarging is for photogs who have to fix it in the darkroom. Real photographers take one shot, and contact print. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico_digoliardi Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 <i>Enlarging is for photogs who have to fix it in the darkroom. </i><p> Enlarging diminishes the True Essence of the print. The outcome of enlarging is weak, impoverished, diluted, a shadow of the real print. We will know the evil Flimsies have taken over the heart and soul of photography when people begin to praise the artifacts tentatively named "grain", that noisy dirt and filth that contaminates the image. <p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce levy Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Anything beyond the latent image is false. See how crazy you're making me Pico. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kahn Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Film sucks! Glass forever! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico_digoliardi Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 FILM is the four-letter F-Word! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dickhilker Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 If this trend continues, we may have to give up our darkroom tents out in the field where they belong and end up in a stuffy room in the bowels of the basement. Someday, they'll probably give cameras a brain that can actually set the exposure and even focus the lens: there goes our job! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phyrpowr Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Glass Plates? You bunch of blue state techno weenies! Vive la Daguerrotype (sp?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul hofman - south africa Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Digital, Anyone?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_richardson1 Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 My Great-Grandfather was a Corporal in Hiram Berdan's famed 1st Regiment United States Sharp Shooters (U.S.S.S.) in the American Civil War that lasted from 1861 to 1865. Sharpshooters were both loathed and admired for their prowess with a rifle as this reference to a web site about Winslow Homer's well known illustration of a Sharpshooter firing his weapon will attest. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/Winslow_Homer_Letter.htm FWIW Winslow Homer and my GGF might have met. Both of them were present at the Seige of Yorktown during the Penninsula Campaign. Yorktown was taken May 4, 1862. This is more interesting to me than to you; this coincidence of the famous with the ordinary, but then it's impossible to really understand the everyday details that challenge unremarkable people to develop and perfect awesome skill in something so difficult as photographic image-making. The war captured the interest and attention of everyone, and as it progressed, I dare say hundreds of glass plate images were made every day of every sort of military subject and location a photographer could reach with a camera. This went on for five years. After the war all the thousands of these images became worthless and a great many of the glass plates were broken and thrown away. Many more were used to make greenhouses and windows for various outbuildings. So much for technology! Still, I would like to see whatever images of Sharpshooters might exist in hope of seeing a picture of my GGF as a young man. Gone but not forgotten. In its own place not very silly either. Simply the way things were done. Straight up. It's too bad we're photograhers and not writers. The idea of a window that is itself an image of another reality has obvious and hidden symbolic overtones too good to pass up in a good story. Would anyone like to accept a challenge to see how one might put this notion in a visual context photographically? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kahn Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 Well, at least I know none of my prints are going to end up as part of a greenhouse. But negatives and transparencies? Who knows? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeaster Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 Daguerrotypes were a weird and wacky Gallic abberation. Real men use calotypes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pavel_olavich Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 The digital sensor sits under a glass plate...therefore digital is glass plate photography! Photography has revolved back to glass plates! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
huntrbll Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 Hmmmmm....so how did you find the time during your elaborate photographic process to sit down in front of your plastic keyboard and electric powered - possibly nuclear generated - computer and spew forth electrons all over the world? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kahn Posted October 24, 2006 Share Posted October 24, 2006 Well, that's the whole photovoltaic process, isn't it? Sucking in the photons, kicking out the electrons? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
splitpeasoup Posted October 25, 2006 Share Posted October 25, 2006 Ah, you modern kids with your daguerrotypes and your calotypes. A true photographer would use nothing but a white bitumen heliograph. If you think it's not worth an 8 hour long exposure, it's not worth photographing in the first place. Pshaw! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kahn Posted October 25, 2006 Share Posted October 25, 2006 Nope, it's a camera obscura, a big canvas, and a lot of sharp #2 pencils..... (Top that one!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico_digoliardi Posted October 25, 2006 Author Share Posted October 25, 2006 <i>Nope, it's a camera obscura, a big canvas, and a lot of sharp #2 pencils..... <p> (Top that one!)</i><p> Plato's cave, charcoal, drawing shadows. (too obscure?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kahn Posted October 26, 2006 Share Posted October 26, 2006 No lens, Pico, no lens! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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