Digital – curse or blessing?

15/04/11

I'm the proud owner of a Hasselblad 503CW, one of the best medium format film cameras in the world, but I do precious little in terms of shooting film. I've never learned how to do it properly, and I certainly don't know anything about developing film (I wouldn't have the space for a darkroom at the moment anyway). Is this a bad thing? Yes, it probably is, because it's a definitive part and aspect of the art of photography that I sadly missed out on, and which could have taught me an awful lot. Sure, there's still time to learn, but the convenience of digital in particular, being a husband and parent and the current lack of space for a darkroom all pretty much take the urgency out of it and kill most of my motivation.

Shooting film is very different from shooting digital. For one thing it's very restrictive (you only get 24 or 36 exposures per roll of film, or in the case of medium format only 12), it's expensive (as you have recurring costs for film and developing, or chemicals if you do your own developing), it's messy and potentially hazardous to your health (again, if you do your own developing) and you never really know whether you've got the shot you were after until you've developed your film. Yes, there are techniques that can significantly increase your hit-rate, but it's still no guarantee. Shooting film also takes time – a lot of time. To shoot film you'll have to slow down, slow right down. So especially from a commercial point of view shooting film is no longer really viable in this day and age. There are a handful of purists and landscape photographers who still shoot film only, as well as up and coming photographers experiment with Dianas, Holgas and medium format, but on a whole film has pretty much been replaced by digital.

Digital on the other hand is comparatively hassle-free, quick, you get instant results and you can shoot as many images as your memory cards and batteries allow. And you can of course re-use your memory cards over and over again, which you obviously can't do with film. There are no recurring costs with digital, only the initial outlay to buy the gear in the first place, and that initial cost is dropping day by day. For a few hundred quid you can now buy a digital camera with some sort of kit lens and start producing great quality images right away. This doesn't make you a photographer, and your photographs will still look like holiday snaps if you don't know what you're doing, but the image quality is there.

Now most people would argue that this has to be a good thing, and to a point they're certainly right. Digital has brought the art of photography to the masses, and I for one have certainly benefited from the digital revolution. Most people nowadays can afford to buy a digital SLR, and they do so in their thousands – every day. Photography, particularly as a creative outlet, has never been more popular … and this is where everything becomes a bit complicated.

Photography has never been an easy medium to make a living from and digital photography certainly didn't make it any easier – if anything it made it even more difficult. There are now so many people out there claiming to be photographers that it's almost impossible to make any money at all from photography unless you are an already well-known and well established photographer with an established, loyal client base or you just happen to be loaded to start with and are very lucky as well. And most of these up and coming photographers are more than willing (and happy) to offer their services for nothing in the hope it will get their name out there and ultimately make them successful or even rich and famous. Well, I've got some news for you people: it ain't gonna happen! Why? For one thing because most of them don't really do anything original. Instead they choose to just go with whatever is fashionable at the time, such as burlesque, fashion or shooting bands. I hate this burlesque/ glamour stuff, I'm not interested in fashion and I gave up shooting bands because a) they either can't or don't want to pay for services, b) because there are now too many kids shooting bands (and doing it for free) and c) because I've never been much of a people-person or a fan of crowded places.

The main problem with this is, that these kids don't seem to realise that it's gonna be extremely difficult to start charging for something they have hitherto provided for free, not to mention that most of these kids, who do everything for free, would be the first ones to start whingeing if their wages/ pocket money wasn't on time!

I do occasionally check out this so called “new talent” as I like to keep abreast of what's going on, and I have to say that the kind of stuff the vast majority of these kids produce isn't worth the GB's on your hard drive. Now and then, however, you do come across the odd photographer who just screams out talent in every image, and who produces work that's highly original and superbly executed. One such example I have recently stumbled across, and that stuck in my mind, is a young woman from Turkey called Ebru Sidar. Her work is nothing short of magnificent. But talents like that are few and far between. You can very much compare it to bands. There are more bands out there nowadays than there are lost souls in hell, and most of them are crap; they're unoriginal and they all sound the same – plain and simple. Very few have really something to offer, and it's the same in photography. Nowadays it's extremely hard for these real talents to get any exposure because they tend to go under among all this “new talent”.

I have always resisted this working-for-free culture. Sure, I've done favours for friends here and there, and they have often led to more opportunities, but in a lot of cases that initial interest evaporated as soon as I mentioned money. Why? Because they all expected to get it for free. How is that? Would anybody go into a supermarket and expect to get their weekly shopping for nothing? No, of course not. So why do they in photography? One of Great Britain's big problems is its highly irritating mentality of something for nothing; I see this every day here. Germany, for example, is very different in that respect. People expect to pay for something, and they expect to pay even more for quality. If you did a photo shoot, and didn't want to get paid for it, people would think that you can't be any good or that there's something wrong with you. You get the idea.

All this has without doubt hindered me in my aspirations, especially when I first started out, because most clients were trying to get a freebie and I refused – I still do. If I work for free then it's entirely at my discretion, and I'll either do it for fun, as a favour or if I think the resulting images will benefit me and my business in some form. Most people aren't interested in photographic techniques, how much money you've blown on gear, how much time you spend behind the computer editing images etc, or whether you're particularly talented. A lot of them don't even realise the amount of money, time, blood, sweat and tears it takes to produce top-notch quality images, and most of them quite possibly don't care. First and foremost they're interested in getting what they want in good quality for as little as possible – ideally for nothing. Needless to say that the current economic climate doesn't help.

Today there's no shortage of young people out there who are more than happy to do just that, and because of current levels of technology they are able to produce the kind of image quality that clients are after. And if I can get acceptable quality for nothing then I'm more than happy to turn a blind eye on talent. In a way, I suppose, it's human nature.

This has forced me to rethink my whole approach to photography, and how to earn a living with it, in order not to get crowded out of the market or go under amongst all this “new talent”. Luckily my livelihood doesn't entirely depend on photography, so I'm in a slightly different position, but the principle remains the same. I had to find a whole different position/ niche for myself and what I do, and probably have to continue to do so in the future.

Perhaps I even have to go as far as to shoot film only in order to differentiate myself, and what I do, from the rest. Perhaps now is the time to think about buying a bigger house with space for a darkroom, dust off my Hasselblad and sign up for a course in traditional film photography ...

One thing I am glad about, though, and that is the fact that technology now lets you shoot HD videos on a DSLR, which means a lot of these kids are moving away from photography and into video …. so, maybe there's still hope.

(Copyright ©2011 Oliver Rauer)