Photography has certainly changed. Just a few short years ago much of the silver mined went into photographic film and paper. Today most of the world camera makers don’t even make film cameras. Point and shoot cameras have resolution that you could only get with large format cameras like the Hasselblad. I have been a photographer for over 40 of my 65 years but I retired my darkroom about 10 years ago. Initially I continued to shoot film because the cameras had poor resolution. I scanned the slides and negatives and made prints on a quality photo printer. I also scanned many of the slides and negatives taken with my beloved Hasselblad over 30 years. I could make very good “straight” prints from the digitized images:
But I also discovered I could do things that I had only dreamed of in the darkroom. I could isolate parts of the picture and edit them:
I could also turn day into night – the original of the picture below was a black and white picture taken during the day. It was a very nice picture except for a very boring sky.
The boring sky was replaced with a moon and the scene changed from light to dark.
Digital photography does have a downside – it’s too easy. Since I got my first digital SLR about six years ago I am taking more pictures than ever. I also find I’m am taking fewer good ones. A large format camera on a tripod required some discipline – you were more likely to look for a photograph. Thank God for those old slides and negatives.
More pictures can be found here.