Saturday, August 9, 2014

Another Way To Learn

Another great learning feature of digital is that each and every image has all the tech details. You know the ASA(ISO) you know the shutter speed, f-stop and all the kinds of other setting info. If you like a photo you have taken you can look up all the tech stuff and repeat the techniques involved. There is less guess work, less remembering what you did before with digital versus film. All the info you need is written out for you in the digi file, so you can continue making photos you like in the same vain.

Using a digital camera is turning out to be a great learning tool for not only making good digi photos but also good film photos. The shot below was made 1 hour and 30 minutes ago of dad, I want to try to do more abstract stuff like this in the future both with dad and in Asia. The top photo is basically what I captured in camera the others are modifications (while still retaining the decisive single moment).

Update* Tonight I have been looking at this image over and over again. I am excited by the possibilities it may present. Abstract pictures are less specific and more general but that is where their power comes from. What if could do abstracts that could be summed up in a single emotion or word? Loss, death, sorrow, goodbye, loneliness, sadness. Sometimes less is more. I have a Alfred Stieglitz quote on my darkroom door "A maximum of detail with a maximum of simplification." Is that the strength of good abstraction? Does it say more by saying less? Does it communicates a larger message by being more general? Or do each of us come up with a different word when seeing the image, depending on their own life experiences? That is probably it. We bring what we are to the table and then we respond to art in different ways because of it. Where I see emptiness you might see loss.

Dad tonight, Mark II 6400ASA, 1/13 F2.8