A famous oil painter friend and I were having dinner at her home in the Fall. I had just got done showing her and her guests a slideshow of very recent Kodachrome images. I had brought a couple books along, including "The Creation" by the late Ernst Haas. By the time she got 2/3rds through the book, she asked me "Why don't people SEE like this anymore?"
Because styles of expression changes, because taste in what constitutes a good vibrant image changes ... Generally things just change. I see a lot of old photography that is very good, true. But I also see a lot of images today nobody could do in the film days. I do have a bias for sport images since that is what i mainly do, and belive me, many old sports images stink, they really do. There so many wonderful moments that get captured today, at all, and without destructive flash illumination, without horrible grain. I also see wildlife images that capture the nature of birds and animals, not just (by necessity) images of animals or birds sitting very still. You see what animals
do , and how they do it.
I told her that I was not sure, but it might be the intrepid nature of seeing undistracted is lost in digital, but it is also most certainly that with a film like Kodachrome, you have to become a master of light and sensing it's wrap around things before you even take out the meter, there are few if any options around this if you are to be precise in your imagery. But today, there is so much flexibility that it is easier to simply "get away" with more in your exposures and quite frankly, all the options can have a sterilizing nature in how you connect with the given medium, photoshop giving the most "Options" of all.
I shot Kodachrome for 15 years, and I do not miss it for a second. Everything you can do with Kodachrome, you can also do with a digital camera. Don't blame the technology - we could get away with that in the film days since technolgy really was very limiting then - but today there is no one but the photographer to blame if an image is sterile or lacks message.
It's like getting off of the horse to inspect the hoofs every step it takes, the ride is interrupted constantly, the option to do so killing the rhythm of the ride.
To me film cameras were much more of an interruption, more distracting. Gear is at its best when you can forget about it, just use it and really focus on the image itself. For me this is how digital works. With film I had always to watch out for this or that. Today, with digital, I find I can much more focus on the actual
images , not my camera and lenses.
So I disagree, as a professional, I see tons of imagery, I know a lot of these guys and I see very little real imagery that has improved upon the greatest images of our time. At once, I thought it was just nostalgia too or that we are now awash in a sea of images. But there really is something missing, and what it has been replaced with is well, sterile or worse...fake.
I see lots of images today, mainly sports and wildlife (since that is what I do, that is what I tend to look at) who are so much better then older images from similar settings and situations. Images who convey the skill, the passion of athletes, action images of birds capturing their prey, images of magic moments ... Images that were not captured in the old days simply because nobody could.
When I look at my copy of "South-Southeast" that was shot mostly on Kodachrome 64 and 200, it has a certain texture, a luminance if you will..
I have some old Kodachrome images I love and has blown up to sit on my walls for inspiration and to trigger my memories ... But honestly, there is not a single one of them I could not have done better with my D3, and there are so many images I can bring up in my memory that never made it on to film because it was to dark, because a situation unfolded to fast for me to keep up, or because I was busy changing films ...
http://www.amazon.com/South-Southeast-Steve-McCurry/dp/0714839388/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268581489&sr=1-7
And then I look at "India's Nomads" in a recent Geographic article and that luminance is virtually gone. The images are still nice, but the feel of it is too smooth, too un-real compared to what I have come to expect from him...
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/02/nomads/mccurry-photography
He probably has choosen a slightly differnt style, and you might not like that style. People change, their styles of expression changes with them.
I see this difference and to my delight, young people see it too. So some of us have a more balanced diet of both digital and film use. The last three magazine assignments I have done have all been on film in my blad. The book project I am working on is all on Kodachrome, it looks far better now than it did when I was young, it is simply stunning and to the point.
Well, you have learned and picked up in your skills - that is a good thing
I am not knocking digital, I am merely knocking the notion that it has improved photography as much as many say it has when it clearly has not. To me, image quality is not a measured scientific absolute, it is the totality of what is in the frame and if it is good or not.
To me photography really has improved, in so many ways. It is cheaper, it is more open and accessible to more people, and also I see so many good images I never saw 20 years ago. Mind you - image styles have changed and I am not overly enthusiastic of
all these changes I see, but that is just because I am old and grumpy leftover from days long past ...
I find this thread to be the perfect venue to express that experience.....
And for me to extress the opposite opinion
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every moment of it!
By the way, film is not dead.
It just smell funny
) another response to this post noted that not just technology changes but the subjective viewpoint of the individual viewer or of 'society' as a viewer and i must agree. i teach photography to lots of kids who have never loaded a roll of film in their life and they often don't see the same thing as i do...though a great photo is a great photo, regardless of media or equipment. on that point i will surely agree with you...you can buy a d3x and a boatload of expensive glass and you will take worse pictures than someone with a digicam and a boatload of talent.
