Home straight

Its quite insightful how reserved I have become with the SLR over its digital counterpart, typically with the latter i could easily take 150-200 shots in an hour and get it down to around 50 sufficiently different images to work on in Lightroom and create an album for a client. Knowing that the process for each image on the SLR will require a much longer amount of time in the dark room and physical costs of print paper and films, developers etc. It makes the medium much less disposable,which I like. It reminds me very much of the way house music has gone in the last 10+ years from days of buying vinyl and being very selective of what you bought and played to now where its almost all digital downloads with none of the tactile qualities and a disposable view focusing more on quantity over quality.
Also similar in music there is the argument you cant be a real dj unless you can use vinyl turntables and mix properly.  it still rages on now with technology making it easier and easier to do what the old generation had to learn over time with a much slower learning curve, adding into that before the days of the internet and youtube tutorials  you would have to either know some one  or be in a pretty well off to afford a private tutor/teacher to learn. It was considered quite elitist and those who had achieved a good technical level were held in high regard.

Having now spent the best part of 6 weeks using a manual SLR for the first time in my life and watching those around me produce images on the same level playing field, I can say now it is something which should be respected. Yes

it can and does go wrong alot of the time and the hours that are put into each image you could argue you should be able to create something at the end. The technical side doesn't cover the whole story though. Behind each completed image is a spark of imagination or connection with your environment. The more you do it the more the more ready you are technically to make that connection show at the other end . Some of the best known street photographers openly admit they never consciously went for a particular element of a shot that makes it special,it was more of a split second feeling that something was about to look and feel a certain way. To me, that's the difference between an image being good technically or aesthetically and one which you can connect to and have apathy for.


"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life."


Henri Cartier-Bresson