It’s an Arms Race (Chapter 1)

Admit it, photography has come a long way. Gone are the days where you pretty much need your own photographic darkroom for processing and development to be called a pro. In fact, pros now have a digital darkroom in a workstation as small as a MacBook Pro. This should make things easier … right?

Well … technically no. I’ll provide a structured series of arguments to sway any doubters, and if there are still doubters after that we can settle it with a bar fight lol.

Before you read on .. make sure you WATCH the videos, they’re awesome. Even if you’ve seen them before you’ll enjoy watching it again.

The Cons of using film:

- overexposed and underexposed negatives when taking the photo is harder to fix
- If you have your own darkroom and do your own developing manually, there is a chance of overdeveloping or underdeveloping the film. Which makes the negs pretty poor quality despite how good you took the photo

- If you use a manual enlarger, there is the change of overexposing or underexposing when transferring the image from the neg to the light sensitive photographic paper

That’s 3 major steps where minor mistakes will affect the desired result out of your images. If you are careful enough, most of the time things go well, but sometimes you just can’t do a whole lot about it. After reading that, it would be safe to assume that being a digital professional is much easier.

In that respect … yes (not to fret, I haven’t changed my mind). Sure I can take photos in RAW format (giving me ample room to fix exposure), and sure if I mess something up in processing I can hit the undo button. Even the printing of photos are neglected as most people would prefer a copy of the images on a CD so they can facebook it. As a result of this, in today’s photographic world, it makes it really hard for an individual to stand out. When people apply for photographic positions, they often get asked what equipment they have. If I was an employer I would favour the candidate with the more serious equipment over the one with basic equipment.

I know what you’re all thinking, it’s the photographer not the equipment. And I would say that you’re correct, however that’s just not the way society works. Many brilliant people get overlooked no matter how good their work is all because their gear wasn’t as serious as the guy next to him. I don’t blame them because that’s just the way it works. When a customer is asking me about DSLRs and he brings up the fact that he used to be a “pro”, I automatically ask what lenses and what bodies he worked with. And sure enough after telling me his life story, he’ll name some of the lenses that he has and I’ll end up thinking “are you serious? That’s some pretty basic stuff” And eventually I would see some photos that he did back in the glory days and I’ll think to myself “If I had a son, and he was 3yrs old, he could take better photos than that”

The problem here is that film SLR pros don’t understand the nature of digital photography. They even undermine it and brush it away, while us digital users do the exact same to film people. I’m not saying there weren’t any great photographers back then, there are … Max Dupain, Kiichiro Ishida to name a few. But there are a lot of people that will think “I can tell this kid I was a pro and he’ll believe me because he’s young enough to be my grandson and that digital photography will never match film photography”.

If you are one of those people, read on. If you’re not, well … read on anyway.

The game has changed, and if you’re not willing to hop onto the bullet train we’re leaving you behind. Gone are the days where you could win the dunk contest with a tomahawk, these days you’ll need to dress up in green and jump over a 7ft tall superman and complete the dunk to get a good score.

The simple truth is … digital photography has taken photography as an art, as a source of communication and a source of evidence to new heights. With film, 400 ISO provided some pretty grainy photos … on the Canon 5D MkII … what grain? Too dark, cant shoot? Let me just pump up my ISO to 6400 while you sit there and ponder how you’ll get a shot that doesn’t turn out pitch black.

Digital will never reach film? Please, us digital shooters are so multitalented that we can even piece together some hectic short videos shot ENTIRELY on an SLR. Go on, watch the video

What up? That’s another point to the digital crowd.

I won’t overload you with too much info in one go. In fact I haven’t gotten to the heart of my real argument. Think of this as an intro if you must, but things will make more sense as I post up the rest of my beef over the next week or so.

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Busy Days

Many of you will have noticed that I haven’t been writing anywhere near as often as I used to. There’s a very simple explanation for that … wait for it .. UNI. Between Organic Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry and Physical Evidence, it’s hard to find time to write these days.


Lucky for me, I still find a small amount of time to get inspired and take the occasional photo. In fact as I’m writing this I’m watching the Wallabies vs Springboks rugby match (Steyn is a magician out there). The world champs are really flexing their muscles right now.

I won’t reveal too much, but there’s some exciting movement in the photographic plans at the moment which involves some possible new equipment along with some other stuff that could lead to more shoots and more work. On a side note, I’m writing & posting this using Windows Live Writer which is surprisingly intuitive and easy to use.

Oh and how rude of me … I introduce my brothers Chuck and Cam

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The Persistence of Our Memories

There is an interesting concept about time. If I was to describe time not in hours or days or years, I would have to describe it relative to another significant moment. Many before me have tried to define it, many have tried to control it (albeit unsuccessfully). Me, I just want to capture it, freeze it, and imprison it for all to see.

Space and time are merely human inventions in a crude attempt to comprehend the world. Philosophers, physicists, religious leaders have all been able to come up with a feeble attempt of describing the phenomenon that is time and space. The most noble attempt by far has to be from the self proclaimed genius Salvatore Dali in his painting "The Persistence of Memories"

This painting is absolute genius. The feeling you get when you first see this painting is impossible to describe. It's a mixture of shock, awe, bewilderment and wonder. To top it off, nobody knows what it means. Why melting clocks? Why FOUR clocks? What is the meaning behind the ants crawling on the clock in the bottom left corner?

In this painting, time has forever been immobilized by Dali. Three watches, suffering the same creative death while a fourth lies mysteriously in its own secluded corner oblivious to its own impending disaster. It doesn't tell time, perhaps it doesn't even have hands. This fourth clock lies there, mocking us in its self-sufficiency, inviting us to come and open it and forever tame its secrets. These watches melt so that our time on earth is not represented by a ticking time bomb.

The persistence of our memories, at times liberating and at times suffocating, but always fleeting. Its meaning? Elusive

NB: On a completely different note, perhaps Dali just melted some chesse which instantly inspired him to paint this cacophany of madness onto canvas.

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