Two pints of Champagne and a Packet of Crisps Please

My birthday is next week, but as I am in the UK we “celebrated” at home today when I got back from Paris.

At 63 I really do not expect or deserve any presents so getting stuff is tear jerking and Carole gave me a book of the photos of W. Eugine Smith and his Philadelphia project in 1955.

Having just jot back from Paris – and thinking of my recent blogs of digital photography – to see a master who worked with large format cameras – at the best with “miniature cameras” having a few rolls of film a day then many (hundreds of hours) in the darkroom to complete the initial visuliasation – and then to compare to the wappy snappy digital masses simply pointing and expecting to get a “memory” from vague zapping is – at best – sad.

I sincerely believe that a 1 dollar disposable camera with 24 exposures using real film that costs real money to develop, is better than a wunderkind digital behemoth costing a thousand times more which can take sixty zillion “images” for absolutely nothing – you end up with a flash card full of  – ummm not much more than – nothing. Add to this a digital camera which must  “compromise” what it “sees” to an algorythm of efficiency so the definition of the  leaves of a tree are reduced to a jpeg mish-mash – this is OK for a memory snapshot – but – photography it ain’t

So, this evening -after two bottles of Champagne – two cakes (one from my mom) – a happy homecoming and looking at real photographs  from W. Eugine Smith ( not photoshop dreams)  – I am going to relish  Adams, Frank, Brandt, Bailey etc and rediscover photography (again)

ansel adams, fruk, living in france, New Ideas, Personal, photography

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