Analogue Photography in a Digital Age
About 6 years ago, while visiting the beautiful city of Prague, I rediscovered the joy of taking photographs on film. Since then, I've acquired a little collection of cameras, from sophisticated SLRs through to simple pinholes, with quite a few stops in between. I've self-published a few little zines, booklets and postcards, though I still wouldn't really call myself a "photographer". I am someone who enjoys photography, though.
In some circles, there is fierce debate about whether analogue photography is superior to digital. To my mind this is a completely pointless conversation for one very obvious reason: almost all my photos whether taken on film or not, become digital at some point. I start with a negative on a piece of celluloid, I scan it to get an image I can see and maybe share. If I print the image at home, it gets sent via wi-fi to my laser printer. If I make a zine, I put my images into a pdf before I send it off to be commercially printed.
I enjoy the process of taking photographs on analogue cameras, but it is not a purer form of photography as some claim. If I choose to manipulate my scanned images with Photoshop or (much more likely) GIMP and Shotwell, there's no betrayal or cheating involved: photographs have been manipulated and tweaked since the process was first invented.
I'm making photographs for fun. I'm under no pressure to make money from them (just as well!) and if I enjoy them, I don't even really care whether other folk like them or not. What matters is not how analogue or digital the photograph is, but how much joy I've had in the making of it.
