SHRED OR DEAD

I’ve been talking a lot of shit lately about 8x10s and how epic they are. Here finally is a taste how epic they can be (click for a huge picture pals). The tones in this picture aren’t photoshopped, or toned after printing. The tones are actually the result of a printing process called Van Dyke, or for me and my photo-nerd friends Van Dicitus. Anyways. Basically it’s all hand made, and my contact prints are 8×10, so they look pretty awesome.

I’ve said a bunch before that if you wanted to buy some of my prints, then you could, and I’ve had varying prices attached to them, but I think my final price is 85$ for the 8×10. Email me if you’re interested.

Also, I’ve talked a lot of shit about the essay that I was writing, and if you want to read through it I’ve posted it below, if you click on read more… Please keep in mind I suck at writing things, and it’s probably not the style I would actually write in, since it’s for class. I’m much better at having conversations about my philosophical tangents regarding photography and realness. Anyways. I need to get moving, work to do at my school in the darkroom (actually, I’m officially done school now, so I’m looking for a job, and all the darkroom work now is pure pleasure (well sortof, I’m printing things for other people right now)).

Photography has always been a process based out of technology, the inventors of photography seeking a more accurate method and technology of drawing. Evolving out of the Camera Obscura, (itself a form of optical technology) advancements in several fields of science (chemical, optical) began to produce fixed images using light through the camera’s lens to physically and chemically change compounds on some receiving surface (paper, tin, glass etc). And as technology goes, photography continued to pursue higher achievements, seeking to more accurately describe images resulting in modern image making processes known generally as Silver Based processes.
Recently along with computer technology a new form of image making process has entered the camera’s already wide array of recording methods. The Digital process is one which relies on an electronic sensor behind the lens to decipher the light and record information to a magnetic storage device.
The invention of Digital technology has changed the methods which photographic images are taken, and is rapidly changing the Photographic Landscape. The ‘Photographic Landscape’ being on a large scale how photography is used to make images, how these images are looked at, and how meanings are made through these steps. When landscapes change it is the result of minor changes over time. To observe the shift in the photographic landscape requires looking at the most basic differences between traditional and digital mediums.
Traditional Silver Based processes (as well as most previous processes) involves exposing a chemical compound to light. The chemical goes under a physical change, which through a series of other chemical reactions is formed into an image (whether the image is a negative or positive is of no consequence, as an image exists). Digital technologies, using an electronic sensor, interpret light into a series of electronic signals which are stored on some form of a computer disc.
In both cases the end result is an image which our eyes are able to make sense of and interpret. But in discussing the differences between the technologies photographers will often first compare image qualities.
With Digital technology being relatively new, it took the process some time to catch up with Silver’s image quality, and in the past few years has had to fight it’s way into many photographer’s image making tools. Professionals and amatures alike have been in the debate as to which process possesses images that are superior in terms of image quality based in: sharpness, colour replication, printable size, ease of use and accessibility and a long list of things that people like to argue over. Many however agree that as Digital technology stands, it is able to produce an image that is the same quality, or sometimes better when thinking of the aforementioned characteristics. Some photographers however choose still to shoot film based not on image quality, but for the qualities of the image.
Edward Burtynsky spoke about the methods of recording an image at the Fall 2006 premiere of Jennifer Baichwal’s film Manufactured Landscapes. He described the differences between the inherent sameness of digital recording versus that of the more organic fluid recording of Silver Based materials.
That is the Digital sensor in a camera will always be the same. All the sensors regardless of how small or how they are spaced are in the same place, every time the shutter is clicked. Although not always actively visible to the eye, the Digital camera’s image is effectively always based out of notion of sameness. Silver processes are based on chemical compounds spread across a substrate. While the spreading is controlled to ensure a product as uniform as possible, the silver particles are suspended in a mixture and is spread in slightly different places on the film in every application. The matrix that the image is created from is therefor always shifting and inherently more organic than the digital method.
Thus the quality of the image in the two mediums may match each other, but the image quality differs in a way which is noticed more intuitively than anything. This intuitive difference however is forming the images that makes up the photographic landscape. If a specific photographer’s images are based out of the same matrix every frame they shoot, their images all look inherently the same, regardless of the subject matter and the landscape flattens out.
Intuitiveness informs other readings of the mediums. When film is exposed to light there is a reaction which takes place between the light and the silver salts. When the film is processed this physical reaction between the silver and light is made visible and fixed chemically. The result is an image (either in negative, or in the case of transparency film positive) visible to the naked eye, simply through viewing the film with a light behind it. When you expose a digital image, electronic sensors tell a computer how to form an image using electronic signals, and records that code onto a computer disc. The only way the image is made visible is through another device, the computer.
Like the chemical development of traditional methods, the computer is understood as an intermediate step in the process of printing the photograph, the difference in recording however is much more complex than just another step in a process. Digital medium’s recording process is a code, and Traditional mediums produce an image. The ability to see the original image with the naked eye is a feat which Digital technology remains unable to produce, or at least without using another device, such as a display monitor or printer to form the image. Returning to the idea of intuitiveness we are left with a recording of an image we can see and touch; and we are left with a recording of an image we need a machine to interpret, and then display for us. The intuitive tactility of the image indicates a tangibility and realness of the image on film; digital existing in a place untranslatable to the eye and to our minds.
Producing an image on film means a literal production of an object. The recording of digital images is, again, in the form of signals on a rewritable memory card or disc. The advantage to recording to the disc is the ability to store a vast number of images in a previously unimaginable small space, and the ability to easily discard of unwanted images. This recording process therefor also supports the ability to take a vast number of images; previously unimaginable without the financial means to shoot hundreds of rolls of film. And clearly then, the disadvantage to the traditional Silver mediums is the need to consume large amounts of film to make large numbers of images. The recording possibilities of Digital mediums becomes infinite, and the Silver process is stuck within finite resources. Is this infinite ability filling the photographic landscape with infinite possibilities or is it merely flooding the plains? Silver consumables such as film and papers being consumable, and finite in nature have a natural value attached to them. They need physical, monetary replacement; there is a literal fiscal value attached, where the unlimited images on Digital discs have no value.
The methods of digital photography pose a problem when considering the classic approach to editing and choosing photographs for use and print. Sheer numbers and instant ability to proof images allows photographers to decide if they are attaining their desired results directly from the camera. This process often results in the photographer over shooting any given situation and deleting unwanted images off their memory device instantly to make room for more images. Alternately images shot with silver materials normally remain latent until their chemical processing, making the editing process happen some point in space after the image is taken, and forcing the photographer to work with the results. The latter of these editing processes allows for mistakes to more easily make it to the chopping block and be considered as images, as well as chemical processes actually allow for mistakes beyond the photographer’s control. With the instant editing of Digital cameras it is easier to attain results already ingrained into the photographer’s vision of the image; archetypes of photographs are more easily adhered to. Being unable to edit until after the image is shot means that the final photograph’s image has more space to change it’s appearance.
Understanding the photographic landscape is only visible through the technology of photography. The landscape being one that has grown and changed since photography’s invention. However the intuitive way which photography has been understood is being drastically changed by the newest form of photographic technology. Now that digital photography is being accepted into the realm of ‘real’ images based on the understood quality of the image, it is being massively used by photographers as a tool to make more images. While this is exactly the same as any other previous technology seen in the history of photography, the value and importance of the photographic image is in danger of decreasing dramatically. A medium which is not based in a method our bodies are capable of understanding, being made in infinite numbers creates theoretical images of no value. The landscape as we understand it is being dammed and flooded, the latitude of images being created ever expanding in numbers and flattening possibilities creating images which are all based out of the same matrix.
The photographic landscape is forever changed by the face of digital photography. Change does not need to be construed as negative, but does need to be recognized as being something different to what came previous. The Digital image is very different from the Traditional, and that change needs to be acknowledged and understood in a different way.