Silver and Gold

Silver is literally what the images of the great masters of photography, names like Stieglitz, Strand, Adams, Cunningham and Weston (you can take your pick of Westons). The essential alchemy of photography, known by the middle of the 19^th century, uses tiny grains of silver too small to shine to form an unbroken scale of tones from the barely discernible to the richest black. Transformed by the light projected through a lens these tones can be made to form themselves into an uncanny likeness of the world we experience.

Golden Ages are supposed to be times harkened back to. They are rarely recognized for what they are until they have passed. What a thing it would be if we could only recognise a Golden Age while we were still in the midst of it. That is what this blog is about – not a wistful attempt to relive the past but a recognition that we are still living in the Golden Age of Silver.

A section from a contact print I pulled from my archives dated March, 1995.
The dark streaks at the edges of the frames above and below that match up
with the sprocket holes in the film is bromide drag caused by too little agitation
in the developer. We live and learn.

There is, I must admit, a whiff of irony intended in the title of this post (and sorry for the Burl Ives ear-worm.) It's directed at those who still hold on to the notion that the age has indeed passed. This is owing, of course, to that substitute for the alchemy of photography has come on to the scene over the past couple of decades, bringing with it speculation about how long it would take for digital technology entirely replace traditional silver based photography. Now that digital photography has attained that maturity it seems there are those who take it as an article of faith that those speculations must have come to fruition by now, therefore film must be dead. In the current photography literature I regularly see phrases like “back when film was used...” as though doing photography using film is a practice firmly and permanently relegated to a past age.

As is so often the case in the history of human endeavours however, expectations and the actual course of events turn out to be two different animals. Several years ago it was common to assume that if someone was still using film that, for economic reasons or maybe just pure stubbornness, they just haven't gone digital yet. They would eventually of course, everyone would, it was just a matter of time. But several years on it turns out that not only didn't everyone follow the script and switch to digital, the plot started veering off in other directions entirely. People with no investment in a film camera system were choosing to go with one instead of digital. Then there was the growing phenomenon of people like me who had switched to digital earlier choosing to switch back. There are still others who shoot digital but have either never been able to let go of film entirely or have discovered film and want to explore it more. It is for any film user in any of these categories (or maybe a category I haven't thought of here) that this blog is being written.

I should say a few words about what to expect in future posts:

• I like to write but I don't do this for a living, and it's really just an adjunct to a hobby I have too little time for already. Therefore I'm not committing to any update frequency.
• I write about what I know and though I've been at this for a long time I don't know everything. I respect colour photography but don't do a lot of it myself, so I will be writing mostly about black and white.
• There will be technical stuff and how to's. If I do an expose on a particular camera or piece of equipment it's because that's what I own and have access to, not because I think brand X is better than brand Y or that I'm so smart you should make the same equipment choices I do.
• I can also wax philosophical at times and many posts will be about my thoughts on this or that. Not everybody's in to that, and if that includes you I understand. It should be pretty obvious without reading to far what I'm on about and if you decide to skip those posts I won't hold it against you.
• As this blog is about film photography it's inevitable that there will be times (especially when I get on a philosophical bent) there will be comparisons and contrasts drawn with digital and speculations about why one would chose film instead of digital. It pains me to know that, especially in the general culture of today’s internet, this will be taken by some as laying the gauntlet for a particular kind of debate. While I can hope that won't be the case among the kind of readership I hope to attract, this is the internet after all. Thoughtful disagreement with anything I or anyone else may say is welcome of course, but I have no interest in any kind of smack-down “you're wrong and I'm right” debate, most especially when it comes to analog vs. digital photography. Let me state it once right at the beginning then that, while it's not for me in my creative pursuits, there are plenty of good reasons for some people to chose digital over film.
• On a related note, I'm no purist. While (“utility” shots such as photos of my film cameras aside) on the capture end of things I work exclusively on film, like many people these days circumstances force me scan and print negatives. I am hoping this will change over the next several months as I have started the process of putting together a darkroom space, but for now some portion of producing an image involves sitting down at a computer. I have more distant plans for alternative process (I'm thinking carbon transfer) printing that will involve digital negatives for contact printing. Digital technology will probably be a part of what I do photographically and I'm not going to beat myself up over this.

If you've been in photography for any length of time you know things have changed, and of course not all of those changes have been for the better. Products have disappeared or become hard to find. The local camera store is all but a thing of the past unless you live in a relatively large urban centre while photography publications and websites are overwhelmingly about digital. Maybe it's just human nature to get caught up in all the great things that are no more and miss the fact that it's not all bad news. There's no need to wait until we can look back on these times to recognise the renewed appreciation for the real, tangible photographic print as a valued object. And maybe we've started getting too used to the fact that there's still a flood of excellent used film gear out there at prices that would seem like a miracle in decades passed. It's true things aren't like they used to be, what ever is? But if film photography really means something to you it's still possible to look around and see that, right now, you're living in a Golden Age.