Cabbage Palms

A few jpgs straight from camera, with my usual sepia tone applied. The camera was set to high contrast mode and I was obsessed with white paper at the time. Intentionally over exposing and playing with contrasts, whites and blacks. Interestingly one needs to put at least as much effort into composing the whites as one does the other components of the image.

I was reading an article where the author accused some photographers, judges probably, as being the photography police dogmatically sticking to rules of photography that seem to have dominated the medium for the past hundred years.

I like to think of film photography and digital photography as two separate mediums. Despite having so many similarities, particularly with the photographs being so beautiful that results from the two such different mediums. Yes so many similarities, but honestly there are so many differences. The most obvious to me is the linear and sudden end of the tones in digital verse the gorgeous roll of tones in film.

The biggest differences are in the process of creating, post processing and printing. While I can easily romanticise my life with film, there is so much I don’t miss. Particularly those headaches from working with poisonous chemicals in dark rooms. There are so many differences, but I’ll leave for another discussion.

The moment someone starts telling you what a photograph can and can’t be you start getting funneled into some pretty narrow vision of what the medium is.

I see digital photography as a grand moment of distinction that needs to figure out its own way of communicating. It is obviously going through a moment of evolution. No longer can photography be trusted to tell the truth. We can now create totally imagined photographic imaging with virtually zero association with anything real except in look. Photography is no longer considered evidence in court (apparently, don’t trust my word on that one, perhaps that’s just a rumour).

So one has to ask, why do notions of what photography should be, from so long ago, dictate what photography should be?

Do some of these notions limit photography? Definitely in my opinion. I hear about it so often in camera clubs and I see it in competitions.

I see the roll of artists as being the creatives that challenge these notions of what things should be. We need artists to push against these walls.

Dont let anyone tell you what a photograph can and can’t be. Make artworks that speak to you, for your own satisfaction, and you’ll continue to love your medium.

Photographs and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2021