To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Ooh pretty. I love that pool. Good memories there. Except for when I accidentally swam in the wrong heat of the 200 IM. That was embarrassing.
We got fifth in state for water polo there my senior year, and played in the championships other years too. Woo kcac!
Wow, the Stranger’s pool is a lot bigger than I would have guessed.
Hipstamatic photos should be banned from this.
i’m not against much, but i’m against hipstamatic.
Why hate on Hipstamatic?
It looks like a wonderfully different pinball machine.
I think it’s awesome and whatever medium was used to create it, it still looks pleasing to my eye.
Unless shot with a 126 camera, this didn’t happen.
Who cares how it was taken or interpreted. Only boners think there’s romantic validity in working in a way that takes the longest. You’re seeing it through a computer screen for chrissake.
@10: Because, you dry cunt, the medium is the message — or so hipstery folk who prostrate at McLuhan’s feet will tell you.
In twenty years, the film, of a magnificently better resolution, will likely still exist. A digital version, if you can find anything on which to open it, will have likely digitally rot itself away by then. Also, one day with a digital camera versus one day with a film camera, and it becomes clear which has the brain in use: the camera, or the photog. It’s why film done well gets due respect, because it is demonstrative of knowledge at the craft.
Photoshop, meanwhile, makes digital-only lovers believe they fucking rock when it spits out modifications that look like it was crafted at the time of shooting. It ignores how HDR is used in place of reality. It blithely ignores the 12 erased-in-situ shots to get one which looked “pretty good” on that itsy-bitsy 5cm preview screen. What a bloody waste.
Speaking of waste: the planned obsolescence of digital cameras, coupled with the raw materials wasted to manufacture them and dispose of them every few years. Talk about an ecological disaster in the making. You can make a pinhole camera from wood and process the film with coffee. You can use a camera made in 1940 and still make better pictures with it than with a digital camera made in 2010. You can use a digital camera made in 1990 and can hardly make out anything useful. Of course, it is probably in landfill now, too.
P.S., the computer screen isn’t the source. It’s the end point That said, you know that a film source looking great on a computer screen will look even better when optically printed to paper and even more stunning when just looking at the film itself on a light table. The digital? Its limiter is the computer screen, which is both the only way to view the original medium and also its end point (for chrissake). One is absorptive, the other consumptive. One is permanent, the other ephemeral.
@11
yeah you are definitely the boner I’m talking about. I am well aware of photographic techniques and received a BFA in photo to prove it. I ran the whole gamut B&W, color, medium and large format. I have a Sinar and (shock) digitally scan the negs to get hi-res beautiful prints. What I’m gettin at boner is that we are talking about content. The picture is well composed, the colors lend itself to a sunny and memory laced experienced even if it mimics an analog process. People enjoy it, the way it makes them feel and what it leads them to think about next. No amount of naysaying or footstomping will change that. If you don’t understand that then you may not suck at photography but you do suck at enjoying pictures…..boner.
@11 is a knob end.
@13 you give knob ends a bad name.
@13 you give knob ends a bad name.
@13 you give knob ends a bad name.
@13 you give knob ends a bad name.
@13 you give knob ends a bad name.
@12: I lack that equipment, dickweed. The best I can muster is a strap-on, and only my partner gets to play (or rather, played) with that.
I understand what you said. I even agree that scanning film is a great hybrid process to let others in a digital era to see analogue sources, but that really isn’t germane here. I just don’t blithely agree with your automaton mentality of lazily advocating gimmickry to effect something clearly aping that which could only have been created with a medium no longer widely in use (i.e., a 126 Instamatic film camera). In other words, if it’s a Daguerreotype, then it should be on a polished metal surface, not approximated with a plug-in and called a “digital Daguerreotype”.
Respect for the medium and all that still matters to some people, much as it might piss on your snazzy, costly, and oh-so-professional Sinar parade. If a great image comes from a cheap or disposable camera straight from processing, then it’s a great image. It shouldn’t need a slathering of plug-ins to give it credibility. No, wait, let’s take that one more step: you can teach technique in art school, but you cannot teach creativity and talent. Congratulations on your BFA in photography. I’m sure your technique is second to none now.
Snarkiness aside, composition was never the source of this complaint. Even Ansel Adams, an outstanding scene composer, did not resort to effects toys to mimic a deliberately “retro” façade. Even Man Ray was original in trying solarization as a new effect. So if this swimming pool image was truly worth its salt, then it would have looked great straight out of the camera. But I think we both know that the image would have looked rather dull and quotidian beyond its basic composition. If we could see that original, then all the better. But don’t count on it.
Plug-ins, treated like this, is tantamount to teenage boys adding goofy junk to their cars to out-do their rivals. Alternately, it’s like a bedroom musician relying so heavily on predecessor samples that the final product could hardly be called original. So I’ll always have a lot more respect for the shutterbug who exercises forethought before the moment the shutter is released than someone who slathers the post-processing equivalent of furniture polish or finger paint to make something ordinary look like something it never was.
Oh, and the beauty of it? When your digital scans (or shots from an iPhone) rot away, you’ll at least have your well-stored (I hope) negatives or transparencies to re-do it all over again.
I’m glad that my photograph can spark such a passionate debate. I appreciate everyone taking time to express their point of view. Thanks y’all.