Author: The Photographer Clay

Photographers are a difficult bunch to please. I recently read an article about the return to analog film photography versus digital photography. It was an opinion article, much like this one. In the article, the author stated, “photographers these days yearn for more than just the cold digital experience.” He goes on to discuss an exhibit by a Frank Ockenfels, whose work often employs non-photographic elements in his work. This reminded me of many conversations and comments about digital noise and sharp focus in our photographs.

Many photographers complain about noisy photographs but relish the idea of film grain. I know many will say but the grain is film is different than digital noise. Many photographers also brag about the sharpness of their lens then spend time softening faces and skin because the lens was able to capture each skin pore, fine hair, and blemish.

We spend money on noise reduction software then complain about how “cold” the image looks. Many photographers complain about photo manipulation and the use of software to post-process the images and often at the same time praise some of the old masters who spent more time in the darkroom manipulating their images or tout the works of artists like Frank Ockenfels while screaming composites are not photographs.

I have been of the mindset that sometimes you must embrace the digital noise when photographing your subject. The photos in this article were shot at ISO 12,800. For people like me who started in 35mm film days ISO 12,800 was absolutely unheard of. We struggled in low-light situations with our ISO 800 film and often manual flash.

Digital photographers also employ the use of software to emulate the look of analog films.

If often appears to me, we are continually in search for the elusive big foot of photography. We don’t want noise or grain, but we don’t want the cold lifeless feel of digital photography, nor do we want to do photographic manipulation or to be restricted to only a few shots that we can load into our film cameras and the cost and time to develop the film. Are we looking too hard for the perfect photograph rather than telling a story or creating art with our photographs?

To me, we need to work harder at telling stories and creating art rather than worrying about all the other nonsense. Create your art and photographs to tell your story rather than worrying about the elusive “perfect photograph”.

As we gain years of experience we often lull ourselves into a false sense of security, knowledge, and achievement causing us to believe we don’t need to learn more or push ourselves to further hone our craft as photographers and artists. Nothing could be further from the truth. We must, and I repeat must, continue to push ourselves to gain further knowledge, and skills, and push the boundaries of creativity.

Without continuing to push ourselves to learn new skills and techniques or failing to push our creative boundaries we can become stale and ordinary. We need to stop fighting against new tools or techniques and learn about and utilize their advantages and disadvantages. As photographic artists if those who came before us stopped working to learn more and develop new technology and techniques, we would still be producing images as Nicéphore Niépce.

Push yourself to learn to embrace new ideas and techniques. Push yourself to learn new technology and tools. Push your boundaries of creativity. You may surprise yourself with what you can create once you open up to these advancements.