Second - sorry, and you've probably guessed this, but this post is NOT about Jonah.
Great! For those who have not already closed the page - let's go!
Most of you are aware that I've been working on a year long project to further my photography skill set and to deepen my understanding of the business side of the industry. I'm halfway through and can't even begin to explain how much I've grown in 6 months. It's really been remarkable. One major component that I've been focusing on is finding my style, or my voice, in photography. It's one thing to take a collection of nice shots. It's not enough, though. Someone needs to be able to look at your work and know that you took the photo.
I'll never forget one lesson in an introductory conducting class in undergrad (conducting music, for anyone that may not know that bit of my background). We watched videos of world-famous conductors. We analyzed the visual. Analyzed the sounds. Then we listened to recordings of the same group of conductors. We were instantly able to identify which conductor we were hearing. Same idea with photography.
I'm getting there through a lot of shooting, analyzing and comparison. I'm seeing a style emerge and it's very exciting! It really informs my starting point when I am approaching a new assignment.
In exploring various aspects of my approach to photography, I had an urge to purchase a film camera. Yes, they still make film and yes, there are still many labs that still process film. I decided if I was going to dive into film it needed to be different than my digital cameras in a big way - no 35mm. I bought an old Mamiya medium format camera that shoots to 120 film. I've been learning it. It is 100% manual. No auto anything. I LOVE it. I've blown a lot of shots. I've also come up with a few that I adore.
There's been something in the look of digital photography that just wasn't getting me where I wanted to be. I chalked it up (and still do to some extent) to my photoshop skills - until I got my first roll of 120 back from the lab. A portrait of Kristi that I snapped jumped off the page at me. Bingo. It isn't a perfect photograph, but it was the look that I'd been missing.
I was recently commissioned to create a few portraits of an NYC photographer for a friend's blog. (I'll share the post when it is published) I took both digital and film cameras along and ended up shooting mostly digital because time was short and I know my Canon much better. However, I took some fairly straight forward portraits with both cameras. I edited the digital shots first while I was waiting for the film to come back from the lab. When I scanned the negatives in my jaw hit the table. I really liked the digital files until I saw the film scans. I'm not sure if you'll be able to see it as drastically in this medium due to the compression on the photos, but here are a couple of comparisons of somewhat similar shots.
 |
| Digital |
 |
| Film |
 |
| Digital |
|
| Film |
So, the question stands - it just something about old school photo making, or am I just getting old and preferring old things? :)
Posts
