Monday, March 26, 2012

One great thing about film is that it's easy to keep forever.  Were I accumulating digital files, I don't know if I'd even be able to load one that's ten or more years old unless I'd updated the software I'd need to do that as often as necessary (and hope the file was uncorrupted as well). 

The 'graph below is a negative scan from a 2000 photograph.  I never printed it because I thought it was too 'unfriendly' with as much dark as it has.  But....now that I tone prints in thiocarbamide and selenium, the color changes that mood, and I've decided I like this well enough to print next week.  It's also cropped a bit from the full negative (another bit of progress from what I did 12 years ago), and I've noticed that this kind of photograph has now been done by a lot of people (probably had been then, too, of course, but I didn't know). 

Painters become better painters over time as they accumulate, and develop skills.  Yet, their creative vision most likely was there from the beginning and only needed refinement and added scope. The camera, though, nails the image as well earlier in one's development as later.  So....I don't feel that this 'graph is any less current in a way than if I had just made it.  I just 'see' it differently now than then.  Make sense?


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