Tag: photography

Yesterday was Father’s Day. I had a wonderful day with Lauren and the kids. And it was also a day to be reflective. 

It is no secret, photography has had a massive impact on me.

Sharing photographs and connecting online with others has deeply influenced my professional investments and has enriched my personal life a great deal. 

The overwhelming benefits are too lengthy to describe in this post. It’s obvious with the massive rise in photography that many of us feel the same way.

We have figured out how to create, publish and connect. And many have figured out how to back up and archive.

But there is something missing. Backing up is critical but I’m not convinced it’s sufficient. When I leave this planet how will my children and future grandchildren browse my photographs. Will they want to comb through Adobe Lightroom files on my computer? Or go through countless JPEG and RAW files?

It doesn’t feel like they will want to do that. 

So I’m thinking backing up is really for me and for right now. It’s less compelling to others in the future.

I think the thing missing are the prints. Photographs need to be printed. Hand someone a print and watch their reaction.

I confess I am out of practice when it comes to making prints with any regularity. Printing is much harder than a quick post on your favorite social network. My closest printing attempt is the annual holiday photo calendar I make for my parents and Lauren’s mom each Christmas

But I’m going to make a new start.

Each month I’m going to pick my favorite 36 photographs. Sometimes it might be less. But not more than 36.

Then at the end of the year I am going to make a photo book with these photographs. And that will be the thing we can have to enjoy, cherish, smile and cry. 

I am happy we are all taking so many photographs. It’s wonderful we are getting more creative as a connected society. Just don’t forget to make the prints.

John Gruber recently linked to this story by Craig Mod in the New Yorker, “Goodbye, Cameras”. 

Craig’s story walks us through his personal journey of photography, from film to digital SLR to digital mirrorless to the iPhone.

And it’s clear he’s passionate about his work and his art. You can also feel his joy and memories of using film.

Because of its simplicity, shooting with a [Hasselblad] 500C is deliberate in ways that few other cameras can match: you line up your shot, take a deep breath, and then, when everything comes together—light, shadow, and subject—squeeze the release and mumble a short prayer as the cloth shutter opens and closes with a thick, satisfying thunk. It almost feels like the camera is munching on the photons of light passing through it. I loved looking at the world through its precisely ground glass,

You should read the entire piece but in the end he comes to the following conclusion

In the same way that the transition from film to digital is now taken for granted, the shift from cameras to networked devices with lenses should be obvious. While we’ve long obsessed over the size of the film and image sensors, today we mainly view photos on networked screens—often tiny ones, regardless of how the image was captured

I agree with much of this. Most of our photographs aren’t printed by any means or even appreciated on large displays. They are mostly consumed on our small mobile devices. 

And with those small displays, it’s less obvious that you need anything more than todays iPhone 5s which is truly a remarkable camera. 

But for me it’s not about the output that matters. The input matters just as much.

When I hold a camera like a Leica M3 or M240, or a medium format film camera like a Hasselblad 503cw, the output isn’t guaranteed. It’s part of the process. But I’m in full control. I zoom with my feet. I can feel, with my hands and eyes, how to change the photograph by moving the aperture dial, focus ring and shutter speed. And then I press the shutter and make my photograph. One at a time. 

I don’t know how else to explain this feeling even though I know that all of that effort doesn’t matter to the viewer on their mobile phone. But it does matter to me. 

And yet its not lost on me that my most well “liked” photograph (11k likes) on my Tumblr was taken with an iPhone. 

To be continued….