I was going to start my first blog by talking about how I tend to slack on updating my own website. I mean I hadn’t updated my website in YEARS until recently, but really who wants to read about that. So instead I will talk about film, that stuff that people under the age of 25 probably don’t even know exists
As a photographer who spent a great deal of time shooting film it pains me to see it slowly disappearing. Now don’t get me wrong I do love digital photography and fully understand the benefits of it, but there’s something for me personally that’s missing. I find that with digital photography some of the excitement and surprise is gone, it’s too instantaneous. I fell in love with photography partially because of the excitement of seeing if the images on a roll are as awesome as you think, with digital photography you see right than and there if the image is good. If composition lacks in the image you can simply reshoot until you get something you’re happy with. This brings me to my next point. I noticed that as a photographer my eye was getting lazy, I started to rely on seeing an image right away and being able to reshoot if I wasn’t happy.
After shooting in Tattoo studios and really focusing on the exact process of tattooing I noticed that my own process was getting a little too loose, I shot very fast and always looked at my images. I spent a good deal of time tighten up my own process of shooting which really involved slowing down and trusting my eye again. After months of shooting digitally in a slower more exact manner I had a more rigid process but wondered what changed it in the first place, and what was missing from photography for me. The unknown quality was missing from my shoots, the one I got when I shot film. So after months of fixing my process and shooting style I realized that digital photography not only made me a lazy shooter, but also lacked the unrevealed quality that made me fall in love with photography. I pulled out my 645 camera and started shooting film.
I’ve noticed that my eye is becoming more focused again, and that the excitement of looking at my images is back! As well I shoot in a way that always deals with composition before I hit the shutter, as opposed to digital where I would shoot than check composition
I have shot a TON of rolls of film and certainly have a lot of scanning to do, so look for a bunch of new images in the near future
droukas.com 