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Thread: Drifting away from.....

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Posts
    193

    Drifting away from.....

    Drifting away from traditional photography. ..

    Recently I had a conversation with a friend and we both feel that we are drifting away from traditional photography. We both use LF and MF and love traditional darkroom work. We spend less and less time in the darkroon and mentally we feel a kind of loss ground every day....

    I'm curious to know how many of you are in similar situation. It doesn't matter what are the reasons or issues (job, family, budget, health, technology... etc etc). I'm curious to know how you get it back, back to the motivation, back to the enthusiasm of shooting film and doing darkroom work..because we want it back, we want to rediscover, we to keep it. Also it doesn't matter if you stop for a while or for along time, what matter is on how or under what circumtances you get it back....

    thank you for any input.

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Rondo, Missouri
    Posts
    2,125

    Drifting away from.....

    I'm doing exactly the opposite. After doing nothing but digital for the past three years (primarily illustrating my books), I'm now finding myself "rediscovering" LF B&W traditional photography. I LOVE the smell of stop bath in the morning!!
    Michael W. Graves
    Michael's Pub

    If it ain't broke....don't fix it!

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    God's Country
    Posts
    2,080

    Drifting away from.....

    Dan,

    I use to do darkroom work professionally so it was definitely the last thing I wanted to do when I got home. However, I soon gave up the job and went back into it as a hobby.

    There were definitely days where the darkroom was the last refuge in the world to go to!

    To get back on track I'd go out and shoot, shoot, shoot. I'd let these negatives accumulate until I was dead curious to see what images I'd captured and this, of course, lead to a curiosity of what they would look like in print form! [Now, I'm speaking of B&W negatives... not transparencies.]

    The incentive to do something ALWAYS has to out-weigh the motivation NOT to do that "something." In other words... your desire to achieve "something" in the darkroom has to out-weigh the motivation to go out and "have a pint (or the incentive NOT to go into the darkroom!)"

    Lastly, that incentive should also have an intrinsic value to you... for example, "you WANT to see what the print of x-shot looks like ON paper." In other words, you're not printing something you've ALREADY printed... there's no mystery to that image. You'd be doing something "just to do it" and, as a result, you'll get bored and less excited about doing it.

    [Hopefully, the above makes sense... I'm just on my first cup of joe! ]

    Cheers
    Life in the fast lane!

  4. #4

    Join Date
    Jan 1999
    Location
    Redmond, WA, USA
    Posts
    119

    Drifting away from.....

    My problem is I have too many mistresses.
    I like climbing which occupies my weekends in the summer. I like mountaineering, which I'm now able to get back into after a too long hiatus caused by achilles tendinitis. And then there's my wife, to whom I've only been married less than 5 years so she still likes to have me around. ;-)
    So, I feel kind of guilty that I have all this darkroom stuff now, and a garage for it, and I'm not motivated to spend much time in it because the mountains are calling and they don't play well with 4x5 gear.

  5. #5

    Join Date
    Feb 1999
    Posts
    1,094

    Drifting away from.....

    I have a day job and a 9-year-old son that keep me busy, so I don't get to shoot as much as I would like or spend much time in the darkroom. I'll bet I do LF photography maybe once every 3 to 6 months, if that. I might do a darkroom session on a Saturday or a Sunday every once in a blue moon. But LF phtograpahy is always in the back of my mind. I'm refurbishing my old Linhof, and that's kind of keeping the juices flowing. Looking at other photog's work also gives me a shot of motivation and keeps my interest high. I also subscribe to View Camera, and that keeps me "in the loop" so to speak.

  6. #6

    Drifting away from.....

    Perhaps you need some new aspect of traditional photography to pull you back in.

    here are some options

    -get an exhibition (gallery, coffee shop, whatever) that will be on your traditional work, that might kick you into gear and get you making new prints.

    - get a bigger format, if you do 4x5, get an 8x10 and start contact printing (that is what worked for me)

    - make, get a pinhole camera, each negative is a little surprise.

    - get into alternative photography: cyanotype, platinum, pd etc... find a historical method you like the look of

    -change from your traditional subjects, if you don't do portraits, start only doing portraits, or switch from rural to urban landscapes....

  7. #7
    Dave Karp
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    Los Angeles, CA
    Posts
    2,960

    Drifting away from.....

    Yeah, I hear you. I have a wife, two kids, 5 and 3, a job, and a lot of demands on my time. Even so, I try to make photographs. Although taking photos suffers some from my overall time demands, its printing that really suffers. I have a huge backlog of negatives to print. Some of them look so promising that I can't wait to get into the darkroom with them. I started to try the digital printing thing, but I don't enjoy it very much. In contrast, I loved the darkroom work from the very first session, and still do. It is nice to have a print, but it is far nicer to have a print as the result of a particularly satisfying and (usually) enjoyable journey.

  8. #8

    Join Date
    May 2002
    Posts
    1,031

    Drifting away from.....

    I sort of drifted away from 35mm photography over several years. When I got tired of the wet darkroom, it reached a point where I hardly used my cameras. Eventually, the availability of inexpensive and reasonably good scanners for 4x5 film (Epson 2450) was the key to trying 4x5. I find the world under the darkcloth to be a magic place, and since I scan and print digitally, there's no smelly darkroom time. I shoot transparencies almost exclusively, and have them processed at a nearby lab. The quality of prints, even with my budget scanner, completely blows away miniature formats. I've always considered grainy color prints to be somehow defective, but that's no longer a problem.

    Best of all, since the enforced slow pace of 4x5 limits the amount of film I can burn, I spend a lot less on developing and get a much higher percentage of keepers.

  9. #9
    Old School Wayne
    Join Date
    Dec 1999
    Posts
    1,255

    Drifting away from.....

    Alan, he WANTS to get back in "the smelly darkroom"!

    I say dont sweat it, I've been in the darkroom almost every night this year after 4 years away from it. It was a nice hiatus. The more I do it the more enthusiasm I have for it, so just get in there and start. If you really want to be doing it you will.

  10. #10

    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Location
    Portland, OR
    Posts
    469

    Drifting away from.....

    For me the trick to getting into the darkroom is to have several photo projects going at once. Making a vow to keep up with the printing. Then seeing the resultant prints to confirm/enhance/further the way I see the world.

    It becomes a vehicle to self expression.

    For instance, right now I have a print project for Southern India, Florence Italy, and portraits of friends that I am working on. I'm about to complete this round of India prints and will post a request for models to Craigslist shortly. Keeping the film running throught the cameras and prints coming out of the fixer becomes real easy and very enjoyable once I get focused on a project or two. Or three. :-)

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