I choose to work exclusively in black and white film for its look and more importantly the craft of creating a darkroom print. In the darkroom you are more physically involved with craft and art of printing. Great work can be done with digital photography, but it simply isn't as satisfying for me. Using film and printing in the darkroom takes much more time and forces me to think carefully about the image and how I want to print it. I think the image benefits for it.
Most of my work is medium format film (Hasselblad and Fuji rangefinder) and 35mm film (ancient Leica M2 made the year I was born) and occasionally 4x5 film. Most of these cameras don't even have lightmeters much less auto-focus. I prefer to be involved in choosing all the settings of the camera to ensure that I create the image I want. I do miss a few shots but I'm OK with that. Again, it requires more thought and slowing down, but I find I consistently get better images with these high quality, minimally featured cameras.
Periodically, I hope to describe what I do with various photo outings and particularly what I do in the darkroom (no comments please). I want to show how my images are created in a step by step manner. I suspect I'll learn something doing that and I hope a few others do also.
Most of my work is medium format film (Hasselblad and Fuji rangefinder) and 35mm film (ancient Leica M2 made the year I was born) and occasionally 4x5 film. Most of these cameras don't even have lightmeters much less auto-focus. I prefer to be involved in choosing all the settings of the camera to ensure that I create the image I want. I do miss a few shots but I'm OK with that. Again, it requires more thought and slowing down, but I find I consistently get better images with these high quality, minimally featured cameras.
Periodically, I hope to describe what I do with various photo outings and particularly what I do in the darkroom (no comments please). I want to show how my images are created in a step by step manner. I suspect I'll learn something doing that and I hope a few others do also.
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