Is Photography Dead?

[Gerald C Koch]

I rue the days I shot one film a week and the images I missed.

The regret gets worse as you get older! Be thankul you recognize it now. That's why I always tell people to stop the incessant testing and get out and take pictures. There will come a day when you are no longer able to take photographs.

Jerry

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Contact sheets not useful? You have to be joking. Make the contact prints on the same paper you normally print on. Always at the same enlarger height, f/stop, exposure time, lens, and without contrast filter. It is a wonderful check to make sure we're fully understanding the lighting conditions and subsequent alterations to film processing, making negatives that print with ease when the time comes to make an 11x14.
To me a contact sheet is invaluable. It's the only way I can tell with certainty, without a densitometer, how I am doing with exposure and processing and whether I need to make adjustments or not. Making negatives that print easily guarantees less waste of paper. With Ilford Warmtone being $135 for a 50-sheet box of 11x14 today, that's worth a lot to me.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

The regret gets worse as you get older! Be thankul you recognize it now. That's why I always tell people to stop the incessant testing and get out and take pictures. There will come a day when you are no longer able to take photographs.

[Underline emphasis is mine. -KN]

These are very, very wise words...

Ken

 

[blockend]

I confess my contact sheets are on the cheapest resin coated multigrade paper I can find, but they're still invaluable. If an image jumps out at 36 x 24mm it's definitely worth printing. Not being very organised digitally, I suspect it'll be easier to find a photograph in twenty or thirty years (if I'm still around) than source the appropriate card, stick, disc or whatever transient technology is in favour.

Judging by the images I took in the 1970s I had no idea which would become important to me and others now, as areas were cleared for redevelopment but I should certainly have covered more.