Despite the high quality, high resolution, fifty-megapixel, technically perfect appeal of digital cameras, I’ve always found them, and the images they produce, unappealing, devoid of substance, and without a soul or skin. I own and shoot with digital cameras when I have to, and I hate them all.
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a means to keep myself occupied, I broke out my film cameras which became the origins of the f/8 Project. I’ve always had a film camera with me, even on professional shoots, but I’ve always been extremely selective of the subjects I chose to make images of.
For over twenty years I found myself only making images using film of subjects that were personal, or historical because I also had a digital camera that was quick and easy. Despite what I loved; what I preferred, what I knew to be better, I had fallen victim to instant results, instant gratification, and the technical appeal of the digital age like so many other photographers who’ve been programmed by advertising from cameras manufacturers and social media influencers to think and believe that digital was better. I’m here to tell you that it is not. It never has been.
The need, for the human brain to interpret an image based on imperfections is a very real thing and it’s been absent in every digital image ever created regardless of sensor size, or camera make and model, since the release of early digital cameras in the 2000s.
Filters and Photoshop techniques are abundant online and always seem to advertise the look and feel of vintage films which I find laughable. Seriously, if you want your images to look like celluloid then simply shoot film and save yourself the time of trying to manipulate your image to look and feel like film. Film is perfect. Enjoy it.
