A loaded issue, this. Also very complex.
We do it and go on doing it because we care about it, I believe. I've been in and out of the darkroom since 1962, and for me there is still magic in seeing an image appearing on a sheet of previously white paper in a tray of D72. Virtually all the processing and a lot of the printing process is mechanical, but it gives me time to think about what I'm doing and what I want out of my finished prints.
In my half century and more in film, I've seen so many once-popular processes come and go. My first prints were made on Kodabromide single weight glossy F paper, I have a few left and these are by my current standards amateurish, but those images are valuable to me and when I look at them, memories come flooding back. I printed on many now long vanished paper types (some of them very beautiful) and then did a heap of newspaper and wedding prints first on Dupont Varigam and Ilford Multigrade I papers. When Kodak Polycontrast paper and filter kits hit the Canadian market in 1965, I was one of the first to "go Poly". In the 1970s printed on Agfa papers and then on various European brands in the '80s and '90s. Since 2000 it has been Multigrade all the way. All except Ilford have vanished from the scene and are now only bits of photo history.
From my first shooting days I shot to please first the client and give them what they wanted, and then for myself, with little or no regard as to what other photographers thought (or still think) of my images. We photographers are an opinionated lot, and when I looked at the work of others I remind myself to bite my tongue and swallow my caustic comments, on the to me, sensible (and polite) principle that every shooter thinks of their work as perfect. Especially mine...!
The decline of film from 1987 (yes, that's when it began, with the "downrating" of Kodachrome, the disappearance of Panatomic-X and the discontinuation of many other good films and printing papers from the glorious era of our craft) and the eventual ascendancy of digital photography, all threw left curves into our hobby and professions, but we survived.
I'm fine with digital photography. I didn't bite the bullet and actively get into it until 2009 when I tested the Nikon D90 and decided it produced a standard of quality I could accept and work with. The D90 is now a dinosaur, also my D700 which I bought in 2012. I first got scanners in 2005 and 2007 and put in years, no end of drawn blood and a fair amount of good red wine into diligently turning my best negatives and slides into good images. After 12 years I'm about half way there and a further decade of diligent scanning if I live that long. I now use short cuts to reduce the workflow, more negatives are batch scanned as proof sheets to send to prospective clients. The years 2012 to 2016 were a lean period in image sales, but this year the markets improved and I've seen more sales in 2017 than in the last three years. I now shoot more more digital than film, but with 'analogue' I'm shooting more medium format black-and-white film than I've done since the '90s. Digital suits my color work. MF film produces the highest quality images with the best mid tones, but recent scans of old color negatives shot with my Contax G1 nothing short of superb.
So who knows what about what? Why am I doing this? I often ask myself these questions and the answers are elusive. Because I can. As I must. To preserve something for those historians and publishers interested in colonial architecture in Asia. Aren't many other photographers doing the same thing? Probably. Should I care? Nobody is doing it as I'M doing it , and this keeps me going. I also enjoy traveling and locating and photographing new old buildings in new places, also my time spent at home researching places online and planning my next journey. All this is expensive and so far I've not seen many returns from it in money, but the future may be more promising. Who knows? My sons will, if they decide to go on with my photo projects after I'm gone. One is an architect like his dad and I hope he will, but I must I'm far from certain about this.
Even after half a century there is still so much I don't understand about my own photography, my motives (and motivation) to shoot what I did in my lifetime, and my periods of ambivalence about it all.
I wrote "ambivalence" as I've known four dedicated photographers who put down their cameras and closed their darkrooms and walked away from it all. One lost interest in cameras and film at age 55 and like the late great Henri Cartier-Bresson, took up painting. Another at 71 won't use a camera again and ignores his vast (undocumented) archive of 150,000+ images. None of the four will discuss photography. They are greatly missed by the rest of us who still shoot, but I understand why they chose to end such an important aspect of their lives. They had reached the end, and there was no going further beyond or back. All of us will likely reach that same point.