Thursday 5 March 2009

I should be working........



I should be working, I'm not, I'm sat looking at the screen wondering what to write. I'm occasionally interrupted by the ding of my e-mail, a client wonders if I could tweak an image of a radiator I shot last month to make it look like one I've not shot at all, done it. Now back to trying to think of what to write. Digital photography is great, or is it? I've just done myself out of shooting something new, I've tweaked an existing image and made something new, okay I'll charge for it but that's not the point. Back in the days of film and before image manipulation became readily available everything was photographed, okay you could spend a fortune on retouching but the client never liked that idea. I seem to be altering existing images a lot these days and that's taking me away from what I always loved to do, take pictures. I have become a 'Mac operator', who will also take snaps to feed the computer. This isn't what I learned my craft for, it's just a necessity now, extra baggage that comes with digital photography. Gone are the re-touchers, skilled in bleaching transparencies or prints, wonders with with airbrush and frisk film, where did they go? Where will I go, what will I do when CGI gets so cheap that photographers will be surplus to requirements? 

Okay I've had enough now, I'm going to load some B & W film in the cheap toy Holga camera I bought at Christmas and go out and take some funky pictures. Till the phone starts ringing and the work starts flowing in again.