Get with modern tech: a QR code next to each image, delivering the "less unreal" image to your phone or computer. And slightly less flippantly, it would be easy to do with online advertising.
Thank you, but no.
I just wrote to a friend today remarking that I honestly wish that I had kept at least one of my late 'blads. Why? Because of the effect that digital capture has had on my photography and on my mind.
It's often said or, at least, it
was often said, that 35mm shooters were of the machine gun mentality. I question that, having used it extensively to make my living (35mm, not the weapon), but since coming to digital capture I have lost that concern with excellence that remained from professional days, and given way to the intent/focus on catching anything that moves or has colour. In other words, it has become a matter of shoot now and think later. In practice, that means that I have to edit through tons of crap in order to discover something that might approach a pearl. Those pearls have become pretty damned rare!
I suspect that had I still retained a 500c/m, I would have saved a fortune in digital camera stuff and been able to furnish myself with a quality 120 scanner instead, at once cutting down on the crap volume and keeping true to the notion of thought before finger.
Yes, I know people here are given to pointing out all sorts of ‘facts’ about digital’s superiority to film; however, I can only believe the evidence of my own eyes when I look at my own stuff: the work I was doing with film had/has more value to me than the work I do now. Photographs are not all about technical measurements: they are about how they look. One easily forgets that on the Internet where the focus is far too inclined to rest upon ‘facts’ and figures derived from charts and clinical tests. These things are sterile bullshit: great photography has been made for decades; what’s better today? We passed the point of really poor lenses (in prime stuff at least, and that’s all I consider matters) years and tears ago; the only thing still causing poor images is poor ability and that includes imagination.
What’s been gained from the freedom to shoot at zero raw materials cost? Look at most of the stuff on the web and it’s a load of rubbish. All that’s increased is the traffic. The good stuff is as rare today as ever it was; in fact, proportionally, perhaps much more so because one is forced to trawl through so much more crap in order to find those few images that really are worth the looking. It seems to me that the number of really great shooters has not increased at all, just that the great number of lousy ones has suddenly found a public gallery.
Rob C