unrequited love

After emptying my SD cards I now know that I have about 9 days worth of digital pictures left to edit. That’s definitely the danger of shooting digital – excessive amounts of pictures that take ages to edit. I’m not saying that analog pictures take less effort – developing, scanning and dust spotting a roll of film usually takes more time than editing a day’s worth of moderate digital shooting. However the work seems much less enjoyable for digital pictures.

Working with film is sprinkled with magical moments like the moment when you hang the negatives to dry and get a first impression of what’s on them. The next moment is the one where the magnifying glass reveals some of the finer details. And then there is of course the moment when you see the whole full resolution image for the first time. This is even more pronounced when you have a darkroom workflow where the image magically appears on the paper in the developer. With film the really annoying part is scanning and dust-spotting the negatives, which can take up a long time, but at least before there are many nice moments.

The digital workflow has comparatively few of these magical moments, since most of the editing time is taken up with discarding the bad ones and waiting for the full resolution to load. Only after all the post-processing is done and you see the final version of the picture there might be a little moment of pride, but it’s rather flat in comparison to all these little moments film offers. And even film allows for that last moment of pride when you hang the print to dry or compare your dust-spotted final picture with the raw scan.

Of course digital has its advantages as well – it’s fast and more reliable -, but in the end I definitely prefer film, even if it means getting infuriated by the existence of dust or sometimes running out film at the worst possible time. Of course I will continue shooting digital as well, but I hope that at some point I might only use it as a backup.

Oh, and before you continue … be careful: One of these pictures is probably not safe for work!

All pictures taken with: Olympus Pen E-PL3 and Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 ASPH.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Just moment later he started kicking his sister.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Scary bottle?

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Lip opposites.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

I like the print on the skirt of the girl on the right.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

She definitely has some style!

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Impending wet T-shirt contest?

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Mother baby interactions are so cute!

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

I was at 1/250 because I tend to forget to reset the shutter speed after coming out of the subway. Here it definitely works though.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

Barely dressed on the subway … and of course there had to be a bottle of beer as well to go with the outfit. Weird!

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

When I came out of the subway it was pouring.

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

© Lilly Schwartz 2014

I stopped for a moment in the hope that the rain would pass. It didn’t stop, but least I didn’t get completely drenched.

Comments

  • Film or digi ? that’s the question, I would say I shoot more or less 50-50. I agree with your comments, in the film process there are magical moments! About scanning, which can be a tedious part of the hybrid process I find the wearing my headphones and listening to some good music helps!
    robert

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