My favorite movie:
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
Starring
Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi.
Film vs Digital:
Shooting film is like filling your camera with lottery tickets. Either you win or you lose. Shooting digital is like knowing you will never lose but you'll also never win.
Digital is easy, quick, cheap.
It produces huge numbers of photos. It's perfect for standard professionals and tourists. It is ultimately however disappointing. Too clean. Too plastic. Too lifeless.
I only use digital for work when we don't have the budget to shoot the whole thing on film. Or safety backup at work when shooting film.
Film is the real thing. 35mm is wonderful.
Medium format film is just another level.
My personal preference is for square 6x6 Hasselblad or Rolleiflex.
About 4 years ago I was lucky enough to be able to move to France for a full month, and it was here that I found my art muse, which was film photography. At the time,
I wouldn't have guessed how much it would become part of my life.
Initially I started shooting street with my then trusty 50mm and Canon digital, however it wasn't long after this that I realized shooting digital that something was missing. It felt almost too simple, too quick, too easy to manipulate something. I wanted it to always look different, warmer and softer...
Around the same time I met a fellow photographer in Europe who lent me his Rolleicord, and I remember the joy of getting my first roll of film back, the frustration of the out of focus shots, but the absolute pleasure and excitement of seeing a few of the scans that worked. These few scans got me hooked and I never looked back. I purchased my one true camera love, the Hasselblad 503CW and started shooting. To this day, there is nothing that compares to looking into the viewfinder of a Hasselblad, composing, focusing, recomposing and taking that shot. That large bright reversed image is something to truly behold.
I love working in the darkroom, and I love the quality of the results. Digital is great, and makes a ton of sense for plenty of things, but there's nothing like film. Can't imagine shooting an important job like a wedding, and not having film of the best images. Sure, I scan it all, and yeah, it's a lot of work, but I've never seen a digital print give the feel of a fine fiber print, nor have I seen a digital image with the organic smoothness and full range of a film image. For the client who needs it now, and won't care about it in two years, I'll do it digitally. For images I will love for years and years, and want a print to hang on my wall, to pass on to my grandchildren, there is no substitute for silver.
Photography has been characterized as 'the art of fixing the shadows'. This is an apt description as the essence of photography is the mechanical reproduction of a scene, illuminated with light and getting shape and depth through the capture of the shadows. We should remember that Daguerre and his contemporaries were trying to invent a mechanical process by which an accurate and durable reproduction of a segment of reality could be made without needing the skills and training of a painter. This reproduction was and is amazingly good its its accuracy and depth of detail as anyone who has seen the original Daguerrotypies can testify. Recently there is a discussion about the fate of the so-called 'decisive moment' as a technique of photography. Reading HCB's autobiography, one should become aware that this decisive moment is not a technique, but a state of mind. The photographer is emotionally immersed in the scene and the actions and wants to find a moment that the spatial grouping of the objects involved in the scene evoke a sense of visual or spatial awareness that represents accurately that emotion.
I've now reached the point where I shoot digital only for commercial purposes, for different reasons, but my love is with film. Film allows me to create the art I want.
Art that people look at and I hope can feel something, a connection, a sense of longing, or emotion, especially when I am doing my portrait and model work.
