Lost / Rant

Music | In Your Own Sweet Way by Kenny Garret

In my quest to find my truth, I've always been keen to the banter between 2 camps, like PC vs the Mac, analog vs digital, specifically, film vs digital. Tides have turned dramatically and the world is moving forward and digital capture has overwhelmingly taken the number one choice for most "photographers" and the general public as well. There is no turning back and I know that film will become more scarce and more difficult to pursue as the years move forward.

What gets me going with this conflict is that technology has taken over aesthetics. Go to any photography forum and there is all the talk about more resolution, more megapixels, more dynamic range, blah blah blah... Who the fuck cares that you can make a 40 inch x 60 inch print at 300 dpi when 99% of your photographs will be 4x6? I've read about guys wanting more from their $20k digital back and would be willing to spend the money to have it. Meanwhile when you go to their websites, they have close up photos of their pet cat at 300% view.

Even the film guys, the so called traditionalist are talking about how they need to get more resolutions out of scanners so they too can print bigger. Never mind that the point of shooting film has some characteristics that are lost in the translation of a scan...

So onward they go, chasing the carrot of being able to print bigger and better and faster... Meanwhile, they have created nothing... Years go by, ideas come and go, then a lifetime goes by and they have only outdated equipment to show for it all...

Where are the discussions of moving forward and creating, aesthetics, romanticism instead of classicism, megapixels and resolution... Lets start using words like form, shape, line, poetic, beauty... in our daily artistic lives. The world would be so much more an interesting place...