Browse the photography related offerings in the app store on your phone and you'll find not just a few of them specialize in taking your straight camera phone images and imparting upon them qualities meant to make them look as though they had been taken with film. This could mean imbuing them with punchy Velvia like colours, giving that new selfie the characteristic of an old snapshot that's been sitting neglected in a shoebox for 40 years complete with fake scratches and dust spots, or simulating the appearance of a 19th Century ambrotype. I certainly don't begrudge anyone the enjoyment playing with these apps can bring. They're a nifty tool for those looking to get a bit creative with digital slideshows and the images they post on social media and aren't even beneath the needs of some more serious photographers.
The thing I find a little bit disturbing about this little trend is the perception it has created with a good segment of the population that this kind of software is a viable substitute for the real thing. I have on more than one occasion fielded questions that in one way or the other amount to "why bother fiddling with those old cameras when you could just run a filter to give you the same look?" My answer is that no matter how good an app is at making the latest output from the iLife camera on your phone look just like a scan from a 1968 Kodachrome, it will never give you a slide. No matter how indistinguishable the results may be from a cracked and faded old family snapshot on screen it will look nothing but fake printed onto a clean sheet of photo inkjet paper. There will never be software that can simulate an historic process well enough to give you a print out that can hold a candle to a real wet plate image.
Somehow the notion of a photograph as an object, something complete in itself, is being swamped like so many other things by an experience of the world that comes to us via a screen. It's easy to forget that this can only go so far. What would it even mean to be simulating the look of actual physical photographs if we had no experience of the real thing?
Lest you think I'm just talking about using software to make new images look old there are plenty of digital tricks aimed at simulating the look you would have gotten if a digital image were shot recently on fresh film as well. It could be argued that prints made through such means can be indistinguishable from a photograph shot on film and printed in a darkroom. Well, if this is what someone wants to do, it's their art. For my money and my time however keeping heart in the process is a worth while endeavour, and part of that is being genuine. This isn't an anti-digital stance or even a suggestion that I'm above using digital technology myself where it makes sense. It's a necessary part of producing this digitally delivered blog let's remember and I'm grateful the technology is there to do it. I do however believe that any expressive medium should be allowed to be what it is. If saying what you want means pretending to be some other media then to me there are serious questions to be answered about whether you've chosen the right media for your vision.
While I can't say I feel starved for reassurance that mine is not a lone voice crying in the dark it is never the less heartening to not only see that same sentiment being expressed by others, but that it has some resonance out there. This little rant started out as a short introducing those who may not already have seen it one such message. It's a little graphic that Ilford has put up, available for download on their website, and it seems to have struck a chord with many photographers, myself included.
Ostensibly an ad for HP5+, an excellent film that I happen to use quite a bit myself, the main message is more about keeping it real, whatever film you use. Ilford will be adding to the collection with more "reasons" featuring other film, but it appears all of them will feature this same theme. Even when it's just a shot of the dog playing in the back yard, what we do as photographers always has an expressive element. Because it matters enough to us, because of all thing things in this world we chose to photograph that, somehow we create art with our cameras even when it's not what we set out to do, So when we're putting a piece of ourselves into it, isn't it worthwhile to make it genuine?
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