10 years ago the club had 30-40 members and 15-20 would show up for a meeting. Now there are well over 100 members and there were 60 attending on Tuesday this week.
Digital has made everyone into a photographer - the membership ranges from those who want to know why there are other settings besides "auto", to professionals or those who could be. I quite enjoy the digital work of one member whose passion is birds. Incredible work, and digital is the perfect medium for wildlife.
Funny how digital's quick access may have more people thinking about images. Not a bad thing. Some of them may then come to see silver based image making has benefits.
I can't quite get into the "digital = evil" thing. That, despite the fact that I'm building a darkroom, and have been fantasizing about the return to BW processing and printing... for years now.
I'm actually thrilled Nikon has come out with a couple of real full frame DSLR cameras of late. I had felt quite abandoned by Nikon for many years, first with all the autofocus stuff, then with the teeeny sensor digital. I have a trove of old solid Nikon glass that I couldn't justify duplication had I to start again fresh with a different system. And, darn it, I know Nikon. I just don't want to sort out Canon or whoever unnecessarily.
I have been accumulating a stockpile of large format - a 5x7, a couple of 8x10 cameras, over the last few years, and darkroom equipment. It all feels more "real" than digital, though I don't quite know how I would communicate that to a digi-photog, or whether I would really want to. I'm more in tune with the idea of showing the startling quality one can get through LF film. That's where film shines most uniquely. Even 120 size. The quality is still there. I don't really want to try to match it by purchasing a $25,000.00 digital back for my MF or LF cameras and have it obsolete in a couple of years. For someone who only shoots so much, it's economic suicide to pursue ultimate quality via digital, whereas in film, it is rather doable.
I'm so looking forward to having my darkroom done. First to do 8x10 contact prints. Then, if it feels like I am getting results that justify a serious "upgrade", I want to buy/build an 8x10 horizontal enlarger. I suspect any question of what film can "really" do will come to an abrupt halt at that point.
Now, ramblingly back to the topic at hand ...
I make a point of telling people when photography comes up as a conversational topic, that while the world is heading towards digital, I am building a darkroom. My "promotional" line is that I am in love with the physicality of film and the chemical process.
That is utterly true, as far as it goes, but it only tells a part of the story. What I don't know how to communicate goes like this. There's something about the history of photography that hooks me too. Many members of my family have various connections to Kodak and photography in general. I find it absolutely fascinating to have a repository of many hundreds of developer, fix, toner, etc. recipes, gathered from all over the internet, handy to me. Too many to count, and quite some number are duplicates, but the rough order is perhaps 1,500 various formulas. (I kind of like the perverse fact that my collection of analog chemical formulae gets stored - digitally.)
I'm little interested in reduplication historical photography or in borrowing established some photographic aesthetic. I would be happy to blaze some path of my own, as much as it is possible to do something new. I suspect there's room for new work to come out of the (film based) camera. The process does matter to me, personally. I don't expect the world at large to share my peculiar enthusiasm, but it's something that matters to me. How does one convey all that?
C
