Jun 202008

Fan’s of the hit NBC television show The Office undoubtably know of Dwight Schrute’s shrewd demeanor. I love the show and have always found his character quite compelling.

I happened upon his blog (yes it’s a television character written blog) and found an article posted yesterday about digital photography Careless Power For The Masses. It’s rather funny.

Like any good satire, there are truths behind the curtain.

Traditional film cameras at least have a built-in limit. You can only take photos as long as you have film. When the film is used up, you’re out of luck. On top of that, film is fairly expensive, as is photo development. These costs made liberal camera use cost-prohibitive. Not the case with digital cameras.

I couldn’t agree more. I, myself a digital photographer, have reverted back to using film in an effort to hone my craft (and my compositional eye) by limiting the powers of digital photography.

The biggest problem that I see with digital cameras is that they cause people to place so much less significance on a single image.

I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but I can see where he’s coming from. Sometimes, as photographers (this includes everyone from pros to hobbyists) we can let that shutter trigger really fly. I think it is time to slow things down and take it all in.

In this day and age we are bombarded by too much… well, everything. From advertising to news, we receive way to much information on a daily (some of us even more so) basis.

It’s time to shut out some of the noise!

Related posts:

  1. Defining Fine Art Photography: Introverted
  2. I Wish Someone Would Save Polaroid
  3. Women In Photography
  • Whoa, I wasn't putting any "digi users" down. I was simply responding to some of the truths in a satire.

    The fact that I state that the quoted article is a satire should lead you to believe that I neither endorse nor do I agree with the article in question in its entirety.

    I do use my DSLR more often than my film cameras, and I would never change that. My basis for reverting back to film is to strip away some of the advances and get back to basics. As an artist it allows me to concentrate on form and composition without allowing myself to rely on digital post processing to "fix" or "finish" the image.

    I still enjoy creating images digitally with post processing in mind, it's just an excercise in simplicity.

    I think every photographer should try it.
  • pros shoot 100s just to get that 1 image using film so stop putting us digi users down
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