I have a desk job. This means I spend all day staring at a computer screen designing tools and dies and whatnot. Most of my boredom relief comes in the way of looking at blogs and thinking about neat stuff I'm gonna build when I get the time. From this, I noticed the presence of Flickr has vastly increased lately. It seems that everyone that blogs puts all their pics up there in addition to the blog pics. I have a Flikr account but it doesn't get used much. I think I'm going to change that. I will add a link to my Flick page and I have already added a little content. I am also going to try to use more of my own photos here rather than use other people's. Now to clarify, I would never intentionally post a pic and take credit for it. That's a shitty thing to do. We all snag photos from the web that were not neccisarily intended for people to: RMB, save as - if you know what I mean. So from now on I'll give credit or tell you it's my pic or whatever. I digress. I have been very into photography for the last 8 or so years. Hell, the name of this blog refers to a Ralph Eugene Meatyard photo. Not an actual title, a reference. Before I moved I had a darkroom in my basement. I've got tons of cameras and photo epemera. I could build a state of the art darkroom for 1945 if I wanted. You see, I dig the old stuff. I'm not against the new stuff but a black and white print made the old way cannot hold a candle to any digital print made with even pro-sumer gear. I'm not going to argue this with anyone, if you can back it up with a print swing by the house and show me. Don't worry- I'm not here to rant film vs. digital. I bought the wife a nice digital camera a year or so ago and I have really come to like it. Actually, I liked it right out of the box. The pictures of the Ducati Elite from a few posts ago were taken with that. It's really perfect for web-photos. Since the birth of my oldest son, the photo thing has really taken a back seat. This is kind of a bummer for me since I really dig being behind the camera. With the digital I don't have to spend all evening with my hands in chemicals burning through expensive paper. Of course the two mediums are different in many ways. I can make some pretty nice prints the old fashioned way. I cannot make nice prints with my computer. I haven't a clue how to use Photoshop, I haven't cleaned the fingerprints off of my piece of crap CRT let alone calibrate it for correct color rendition. I'm not about to spend a nickel on another printer and archival inks.... You get the picture. I don't have time to do the one I'm good at and I don't have the time to learn the one I know very little about. Ah yes, but what about the "I'm not going to bitch about not having the time to do stuff" comment? I'm getting to that. The point is, with digital, at the very least I can make photographs. Maybe they are just snapshots at this point, but I'm getting back to taking photographs and that's something I love. I'm Surly and I have a camera. Surlycamera. See? Positively positive.
4 comments:
Sounds like Grandma. "I worked so many hours." Just gave my daughter the dark romm stuff Uncle Barney gave me 10 years ago. She will put it to good use. I would rather go to the range or fishing.
I like old cameras too. Of course, both of my 35mm slrs have dead batteries and no film right now, because I use the digital for pretty much everything.
But I've been meaning to fix that...
I'd like a decent digital camera that I could take nicer pics than the little cheapie I have now. One more thing to spend $$ on that I don't have!
You take nice photos and probably do need to gear up and get with it.
Jim, at least someone may use it. Better than it just sitting around.
Lucky, Lucky, Lucky... Old cameras do not use batteries. LOL
Unk, thanks. Yeah, the wife's does a pretty good job for now. It's too bad you have to spend a min. of $500 on a digital to do what a used SLR would do for <$100. I guess that's progress.
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