When I was younger I would sit and look through all the photo albums my mother had meticulously put together (in chronological order, with captions). I used to love looking at how things used to be, or how I used to be. When I look at those photos now I feel nothing but happiness. These photographs captured a happy childhood, yet I was a lonely, highly neurotic child. These are the things that family photos never really capture.
I love film camera. Digital cameras are great and all but they just embody modern life; that instant gratification, of wanting everything now now now. I love waiting to get my photos developed, and the fact that you cannot take pictures over again to get them perfect. Because things aren't perfect, and they shouldn't appear to be.
I own 6 cameras, but primarily I use two. One is my standard digital camera and the other is my Holga film camera. I have one ancient, now defunct film camera, one polaroid camera and two barely working film cameras. I like my holga camera because the pictures I take on it have nothing to do with skill and everything to do with luck. I never know how the pictures will turn out, and I like that. I am no photographer, but I do like to take photos. I like to go on mini adventures around the city with my camera. I think I'm just trying to do the beauty of the world justice, in my own daft way.
As for my storage of photos, I am very different from my mum. I have a shoebox full of photos at my parents house, from my teen years mostly, and then there are the rest which are on my computer. Many photos I suppose may be floating around the internet too. Even with my holga film I usually just get it developed straight to CD. We really do live in such a virtual age, physical things are getting more and more sparse. It's a shame, but I am a product of my generation.
I suppose that it's hard for photographs to seem special nowadays, but all photographs are meaningless, and like life, it's the meaning we put into them that counts.
I love looking at old photos too. I was cleaning my room and saw some old ones of my brother when he was like 5. It reminded me of this photos where he went a bit crazy with chocolate and covered his whole face with melted chocolate. It made me wonder how this photo was taken because we used a film camera. Nowadays, if something like that happened, taking a photo is instinctive. You just take a photo without thinking. I think back then it had to depend on whether there was film in the camera left over, and whether the situation was worth photographing. I don't think I'm articulating myself very well here. Basically, I am trying to say that right now, photography is, like you said, very much about capturing something over and over again until it's perfect. It's all snappy and efficient. I don't know what I'm saying so I shall stop here. But I like this post :)
ReplyDeleteShu Shu, you make an excellent point! You shouldn't worry about not making sense, it gets in the way of your sense ;)
ReplyDeleteAlice bought a funny old camera (by that I mean cheap red one from Salvo's or something) to Melbourne last week and we took photos. For me, digital cameras are good because I never used to be able to focus on analog ones. But I miss the days when you just had 24 pictures as opposed to 90.
My mum keeps all our family photos in a big box and sometimes it comes out of storage (usually when me or Alice have been snooping) and I sit and look at photos of my family and my dad and I cry a little bit.