|
|
by
bud simpson |
June
28, 2006 |
Bring
Back the Shoebox
I have had a sudden awakening from a long, technology-induced
slumber. About a dozen years ago, after decades of burning through
tens of thousands of rolls of photographic film, I started dipping
my toes into the then-shallow digital imaging pool. Slowly at
first, I continued to shoot film, and scanned images before
delivering them to clients in digital format. I became fully
film-independent several years ago, and the world of silver
salts and toxic chemicals receded quickly in my rear view mirror.
This has been just fine with me. My propeller beanie spins all
the more rapidly when I can solve complex imaging challenge
with nothing more than a few keystrokes and a bit of nimble
mousing.
Digital photography at the professional level is nothing new.
Only when the pro market had sufficiently advanced the technology
and the desktop computer had become a ubiquitous addition to
everyday life did consumers start to get their hands on affordable
digital cameras. This has, for the most part, been a good thing.
Consumer and “prosumer” level digital cameras are
capable of astounding image quality. One thing, though, has
been lost – the snapshooter’s shoebox full of pictures.
In the past, pictures were snapped, film was developed and prints
were made. Every image you took, no matter how good or how bad,
was printed without prejudice. Part of the excitement of picking
up a freshly developed roll of film was seeing what “turned
out.” If you accidently took a picture of your feet as
you were walking through the zoo, it got printed right along
with the pictures of the alpha male chimpanzee hurling little
organic surprises at your mortified Aunt Myrtle. Every one of
these pictures, once returned from the mysterious process of
development, was eventually sent to safekeeping in a cardboard
box, or maybe even in a scrapbook or album. These were stashed
away, hidden from view and sometimes forgotten. Pictures became
slices of life, preserved as in a time capsule and buried away
from prying eyes.
Today’s photographic process is a bit different. The average
digital snapshooter holds his or her cameras at arm’s
length and composes their future memory on a teeny LCD screen
on the back of their camera. To the average bystander, this
looks pretty goofy, and gets that much funnier when the camera
is held by someone wearing bifocals. The net effect is that
of someone trying to compose a scene by looking at a distant
postage stamp – much smaller than what they could have
seen through the camera’s little peep-hole viewfinder
to begin with. At the decisive moment, they click the shutter
button – which, on some of today’s cameras starts
a cruel and invisible process that seems to take a few days
before the shutter actually fires. People age and retire waiting
for the darned thing to click.
Once the image has finally been recorded, many cameras offer
up a preview image on that same teeny LCD screen. The photographer
then launches into a behavior photo snobs refer to as “chimping”
– looking at the screen and emitting a series of disapproving
simian grunts and/or soft “oohs” of satisfaction
at the resulting image. Meanwhile, back at the zoo, a real chimp
has done an impromptu skit in which he has exactly duplicated
the screaming visage of your panicked Aunt Myrtle, complete
with a fainting spell and a cell-phone call to a lawyer. You,
however, have missed this shot because you were trying to decide
whether your snapshot of the smiling chimp doing his Nolan Ryan
windup was worth keeping.
Simplify. Do not chimp your pictures. Do not take your camera
home and cull out the clinkers. Take a chance. Keep them all.
In fact, print them all. Take your camera’s little memory
card to the closest drug store, grocery store, big-box warehouse
or anywhere else that has a photo department and print every
last one of those defective memories. Take them home with you,
pass them around at the next birthday party or Sunday dinner,
and after everyone, including your Aunt Myrtle, has been exposed
to your photographic genius, write all the people’s names
in the pictures on the back and put your pictures in a shoebox.
Reebok, Sketchers, NineWest or Candies, the brand doesn’t
matter. What matters is that the pictures somehow survive. You
may, years from now, find that some of your mistakes are more
important than you might believe today. People and places you
regard as commonplace today might be tomorrow’s gateway
to recalling things long since lost. Maybe in the larger scheme,
the pictures you take aren’t really for you, anyway. Stripped
of today’s technology and tucked safely away in shoeboxes
or books, your pictures, your contribution to the time capsule,
will survive long after you’ve moved on.
Bud
Simpson is a member of the infamous Northeast High School Class
of 1968 and a professional photographer. Learn more at www.budzilla.com.
