Once upon a time, there was a camera in my hand every weekend off to explore and shoot. The camera was my passport and I went everywhere with it, including dangerous places I wasn’t “supposed” to go. I’ve noticed in the past year, however, that I just can’t be bothered. This bothers me. There is always something to shoot and yet, around here, I’ve seen it all and captured it. The last time I was excited about photography was on a return trip to New Orleans last year with the new Sony A7 mirrorless camera. But once again, it was ho-hum. The city wasn’t exciting as it used to be. The camera was just another camera.
For the past 365 days, I’ve tried shooting with only the Hipstamatic every day during “Snappy Hour”– that last hour before sunset with the golden rich colors. Yeah, it was a project but looking back now to me it was…boring.
Popular camera magazines have turned their printers off. A major photography website has shut down after 25 years. Most photographers are tired of watching or reading the same format hyped by journalists regarding the.next.big.thing. When you read/watch reviews of cameras you always hear about megapixels, shutter speeds, battery life, blah, blah, but not what sort of images are produced. No soul, just technology. There is more to photography than a large sensor or post-production digital editing.
I miss the hours spent with the film camera process of loading the film, advancing the next exposure, creating negatives, selecting the best images out of only 36 exposures and then running the images through the chemical fixer. Ahh those darkroom chemical smells!
Hold on…just spilled some pipe tobacco on the MacBook. Okay, where was I? I miss portrait photography in the way I want to make it. No wait, that’s for another post. Ahh yes, the wrap-up:
How do I get my mojo back? Do I go back to analog film photography and spend hundreds of dollars on film and film development? There is something to be said about the analog results- they have soul. Or do I sell most of my digital cameras and focus on just the one? Those brilliant but souless photos are more cost effective.
With the proper tools, anyone can make brilliant photos on the iPhone, but the computational photography takes a lot of the soul out of it too.
I am tired of the documentational photographs I’ve been shooting lately. I want to get back to making art. Maybe only then I can get my photo mojo back(?)
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