It is all about your approach to the craft. If it's simply a question grabbing any sort of image then having some fun back on the PC with it then that's fine, enjoy yourself, but I don't see that as being the same thing at all as actually presenting visual evidence that you have experienced or interacted with a particular environment or situation and through a choice of film and camera settings have recorded that moment in a manner that you feel best expresses it
Whoah, that's rude, patronising, innacurate, pretentious and based on false assumptions! Nice one!
If you can only wonder at this then you'll probably never understand it.
And that's simply rude and patronising.
I used to spend time in the darkroom just like I now spent time in PS/LR. There's no fundamental difference in the basic process, you take an image captured by a camera and make the best job you can of it, except I can do a better job with a computer. I used to love darkroom work and was pretty good at it - I used to get asked who did my printing, when showing my folio around. Many photographers outsourced their B+W printing to specialist printers then. Despite that, after trying PS back in 94, I never went in a smelly darkroom again. My DeVere 504 currently gathers dust in a friend's warehouse.
Messing about with plugins or presets is very superficial to my mind...
I don't actually use plugins BTW, but would be tempted to do so if they improved my workflow, as presets/actions I've created already do. But doing so is no different at all from using a film, which fundamentally is only a preset and the developing process you then choose is the same as an action.
...and as for the immediate gratification of an instant copy then that undermines the very essence of photography as being an art,..
Wow it does, that'll come as a suprise to many. Not that has anything to do whether something is 'Art'.
.... for if I produce a series of mono prints in the darkroom then each will be an individual object in its own right, no two will be the same thank God.
I can also easily make each print slightly different when printing digitally, will that somehow make the prints better or more worthwhile? Besides doing mass reproductions of prints or paintings is pretty easy and was done for many years before digital existed.
Digital is all about endless and accurate reproduction of an image that has been presented to the camera....,
No it isn't. It's simply the modern method of capturing an image used by a huge variety of people.
....it's what it does very well and does best, and why it's used so extensively, but that doesn't mean to say it's better than film, only different.
If it's only different, why do you dismiss it so nastily and those who use it so rudely? Actually I would say it is better than film in most ways. Hence the fact that film is now rarely used by most photographers. The only drawback I've come across is the increased weight of digital kit and dependence on electricity.
Actually I'm quite happy to see the world go digital for it leaves a greater space for those who appreciate a more considered method of portraying this world and its activities. As for having a proclivity for film it is nothing compared to the swivel eyed digital fetish that is so often on display. If you don't 'get' film then fair enough, but nobody makes themselves appear any superior by knocking it, for that too is incredibly self serving.
Wow, how hypocritical is that paragraph?!?
BTW, I wasn't even knocking film, as I said how much I liked the look of film. But as I can do the same thing better with digital, I continue to leave my many rolls of unused film in the fridge.
The fact that a film fan thought my digital shots were done on film as they had that special undefinable film look, only underlines it's the photographer that makes the images not the equipment or medium. The considered approach is also down to the photographer, not the capture medium. And who's to say the slower photographer takes better pictures anyway. Plus if you compare a digital view camera versus a 35mm film camera, who's the more considered photographer then.
The only thing that matters is the final image, no-one bar photographers really cares how it was shot and on what equipment.
There's not much point me even using film anyway as most of the interesting films/developers I liked, vanished a while back, even before the digital revolution.