Thanks for watching!
The Secret to Double Exposure Photography (Film and Digital)
Thanks for watching!
Why film is better than digital
Basically a “photo dump” in a video of all the stuff I’ve been making with my Nikon FE lately.
Thanks for watching!
How big can you print a 35mm negative?
I was curious about this because I like printing my images huge and I’ve never really tried to push a 35mm negative to see how it would do. Watch the video for the results!
Shooting Day and Night in One Photo on 35mm Film (Cinestill 800T)
This was a super interesting experiment! I decided to mix up this multi-location Double Exposure series I’ve been working on by shooting 2 exposures at different times of day AND different locations. Overall, I liked most of the results.
The frequency of the videos will increase as I get a handle on this workflow. Thanks for watching!
Travel Photography is Boring
Everyone Uses The Same Camera (digging deeper for ideas and my new Nikon FE)
Hey! In this episode, I talk about how everyone uses the same film cameras, my new Nikon FE, and how we need to dig deeper for ideas.
New video coming soon!
You can watch my 2.5D Printing video here
Thanks for listening!
008 A Double Exposure Experiment
Just a quick note before we get started: Stick around to the end of this episode for a brand new uh..unamed segment that I’m going to start doing weekly where I recommend a new something, whether be a book, movie, TV, or something else every week.
I love double exposure photography.
Why?
Double exposure often feels like a hack to create a loaded image. They live at the intersection of FORM and NARRATIVE. Mixing two images from two different moments at two different times basically automatically adds double the meaning to a photo no matter what, since photography is often just about a singular moment. But that’s a pretty clinical and oversimplified definition. The fact is, it’s harder to tell a story with a single image successfully, but a double exposure often can be a useful boost.
The double-exposure technique also is cool and leads to very unpredictable results much of the time. It’s experimental: with each image, you never really know how they will interact with each other. There’s a sort of randomness to it depending on what particular double-exposure technique you are using.
In my 2.5D printing video, I mentioned how the “heads with flowers in them” double-exposures are the lowest of the low creatively. I think those types of photos are an example of the most common usage of the double exposure technique, which feels like it’s purely about form rather than a story we are trying to tell. When an artist has a really great reason for a double-exposure, I find it super interesting.
Of course, I’m really only interested in making them “in-camera”. I like the chaos of it. Double exposures made in Photoshop seems pretty uninteresting to me as they are super clean and not recording actual moments. It’s creating meaning “after the fact” with two moments that may have no connection to each other other than looking aesthetically pleasing.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that some modern digital cameras have an in-camera double exposure feature. I’m most familiar with the Nikon one, as I’ve used Nikon my whole career until last year. Nowadays, I use the feature in my Fujifilm camera, and I kind of like it more than the Nikon feature. It’s at least easier to use. Sony, since it’s a boring PC of a camera, has no creative feature like this because it’s a boring camera made for boring people, of which I guess I’m one since I own one of them. (I’m recording this video on a Sony A7IV right now)
I have a Nikon N65 which is a film camera, but it also has an in-camera feature that feels very similar to the digital Nikon in-camera double exposure feature. Big fan of a film camera that has a double exposure feature built in, otherwise I feel like I’m breaking the camera when I have to trick the film to not advance.
In order for an in-camera double exposure to work, we have to get good at figuring out where the subjects lay in the frame and how we want them to interact with each other. Maybe the first image is your subject and the second image is your subject again but upside down. Maybe it’s your subject again but out of focus. My Fujifilm helps make it easier by showing me where things will fit, but my Nikon or Polaroid camera doesn’t have such a luxurious feature.
——
Recently, however, I decided to experiment. I have a Nikon point and shoot camera called a Nikon L35AF, which is a fun and extremely frustrating camera to use. It’s astoundingly sharp for a point and shoot, and I often use it to take photos of family events and stuff. But…the battery compartment likes to bust open which keeps me from being able to hit the shutter. I have to tape it shut or else the camera just doesn’t work randomly. But…I noticed that when I finished a roll, it leaves a little tab of film out. So a few years ago, I decided to just pull that tab out and shoot over the roll again. The results were pretty cool in some cases, but there was no line between frames. It was just kind of a visual mess aside from a few lucky shots.
Not only that, but the problem with the in-camera double exposure features I’m used to is that they time-out, which means I only have a limited amount of time between images. So…I thought, what if I could shoot a double exposure in two different places?
So I had an idea that if I marked exactly where I loaded each roll of film, it would make sure the frames line up instead of just being a long negative strip with no delineation between photos. That way, I could shoot 36 or 24 shots (depending on the roll of film) in one place, then hop on a plane, reload the roll of film making sure to line it up where I marked it, and then I could shoot over it again, wherever.
I’m pretty excited how this set of photos turned out. So much so that I’m planning my next batch. To me, they tell a story about my life over the past few years. At the end of 2018, we moved from Chattanooga to basically, the woods in South Carolina. After a year, COVID happened and I entrenched myself in the small town world, stopped getting on planes and only driving around to smaller locales. My world shrank, and this year I’ve started to break out of that a little bit. We went to New York (on my first plane ride in 3 years) and I’ll be going to LA and some other places here soon as well.
Over these 3 years, I’ve changed a lot as a person and a photographer. I also realized that I got a little skittish of the outside world a bit as well. There was a safety in my smaller, quieter world, but I started 2023 realizing I needed to break myself of that feeling. New York really helped shake me out of it.
To me, these images look really awesome, but they are more than that. They are a document of a transition point. The woods that I mostly photographed are woods that I’ve spent a lot of time in during the pandemic. Despite breaking out of my tiny world I’ve been living in, I now carry around everything I learned and experienced during the Small Town Photo Project era. All that stuff has now been added to the stew of who Will Malone is.
Maybe that’s why I love Double Exposure photography so much: It’s because I see experiences as all stacked on each other. We are the combinations of our experiences and the world around us. Everything gets mushed together and forms who we are. These types of photos kind of embody that idea.
More on this series and maybe more series-es in the future! I am now just making a video/podcast every week for the Summer of ’23 around creativity and art and stuff that gets me excited. These are always kind of anchored by photography since that’s where I come from and continue to live.
But I’m adding a new segment to these where I recommend a thing- I’m gonna call it Will’s Thrills- just kidding I’m not going to call it that. Here’s what Chat GPT said I should call it:
Here are some title ideas for your podcast segment:
Will's Pick of the Week
Malone's Media Must-Haves
The Malone Method: Recommends
Will's Wonderful World of Media
Media with Malone
Malone's Must-See/Must-Read/Must-Listen
Will's Spotlight
Malone's Media Minute
The Malone Recommends Show
The Malone Manifesto: Media Edition
These are pretty bad. I think I’m just going to call it RECOMMENDATIONS.
So, in this week’s recommendations, I have 2 books for you since I was planning to start this segment last week and ran out of time.
The first book is Good to Great by Jim Collins. This is a book I read a while back and have some friends who have been talking about it recently. Decided to re-read it, and while many of the business examples about businesses like Wells Fargo and Circuit City are outdated, it’s a worthwhile book that uses to data to boil down attributes of how a company goes from middling to great, as the title states.
The next book is legendary music producer Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It’s a great examination of the creative process by someone who has worked with and observed the most creative minds in human history. Every time I cracked it open, I had to make sure I was ready to take notes, because it is packed with tons of great reminders of the trials and tribulations of a creative life.
That’s it for today. Thanks for watching and/or listening, and I’ll seeya next week.
Digi Cams
Time doesn’t work the same way in the photography world. We are going forward and backwards at the same time, at any given moment. There’s a section of photographers always looking toward the future with the latest gear, and then there’s a section of photographers living in the past appreciating the gear of the past. Now, many photographers have one foot in both.
Think about analog photographers that you see on Youtube, that are now defining a whole new generation of photographer: In order to maintain a Youtube Channel they have to be fluent in modern filmmaking techniques. Many of them have personas of analog-only, and yet they can color-grade their footage with their Sony A7 whatever while they are always simultaneously carrying around with their Mamiya RZ67.
Many film photographers now are exploring a new subsection of gear: “digi cams”. That’s right, digi cams are basically the little point and shoot digital cameras from the early 2000s. If film photography is the vinyl of the photography world, digi cams are CDs.
So what is the draw? Basically, I think that cameras are basically perfect now, so many photographers are looking for some personality in their images. And really, good for them. But, I think many photographers don’t understand it- why would you go backwards?
Older photographers don’t get it because they lived through the struggles of using film professionally. When they adopted their giant Nikon DSLRs, it solved their problems and made their lives easier. Photographers born in the 90s or early 2000s see photography totally differently. They have only seen digital, and as a result, they see endless possibilities.
Limits are good for creativity. The best, most powerful camera ever doesn’t necessarily make an interesting image, it records data really well. It can be a tool for creativity, obviously, but I think many photographers still think the camera they own is what makes them an interesting or good photographer.
When I first heard about the “digi cam” thing, I definitely started to have the pangs of old age. I 100% started to understand the old Nikon Dad thing of “why would anyone go back to film?” My first thought was just, why?
I guess I started with what’s now called a “digi cam”. In fact, it’s sitting on my camera shelf. My first camera was an Olympus FE-360. After shooting with it for months, I was antsy to upgrade to a fancy Nikon D3000, and obviously my camera purchases just went up from there. But now I’m in my 30s, and apparently my Olympus is cool again. Which kind of makes me feel cool. I guess this is what it feels like to be an OG.
But in all seriousness, if a photographer was born after 2000, I get why they are using all kinds of tools rather than just one type of camera. All photography is digital and made for the internet, so the game is now about just making cool images. Most photographers aren’t printing their work, so who cares about resolution anyway?
I’ve struggled to “shrink down” my camera usage a ton because I’m always taking pictures with printing in mind. I try to make sure I have nice big files ready at any given moment, just in case. But even I’ve changed a bit: I went from the high res sensor of a Nikon D850 to a Sony A7IV (basically from 45 megapixels to 33 megapixels), because it just doesn’t take as much file to make a really good large print. My DJI Mavic Pro 2 is only like 20 megapixels with a 1 inch sensor, and I have images from that camera hanging in spaces at around 60 inches by 40 inches, and they look great. Honestly, with a higher resolution sensor I was always fighting a ton of noise, and now I don’t have that problem as much. Are more megapixels better? I guess it depends. For most people, including me (someone that prints frequently) not really. If you want to print a mondo print of a Canadian penny Peter Lusztyk-style, then yeah, maybe you need 150 megapixels. I don’t know. Most people don’t though.
I’m probably not going to be dusting off my Olympus FE-360 any time soon because of a totally different reason though: It’s not fun to use. Back when I was about to pull the trigger on buying my Fujifilm X-E4, I almost bought one of those Ricoh GR III point and shoot cameras. But after watching videos of people using them, it just seemed kind of lame. I wanted a few more dials and tactile…ness. I’m one of those people that like a more retro feel, because the feel of a camera itself can be an inspiring force.
I’m riding the line of being somewhat agist in this episode, so I’ll say this: Whatever floats your boat. If you’re retired and in your 70s, maybe the latest Nikon mirrorless and 800mm lens is what inspires you to make stuff. If you’re 22, and you’re getting pumped to create some images with an old Sony Cybershot, that’s cool too.
Everyone is different.
I go back to my work camera/play camera thing. Basically, the biggest photographers I know do this. They have a camera they carry around all the time, and then they have a camera for work stuff. I think we are at a point now where the work camera is actually pretty uninteresting, what’s interesting is seeing what photographers are often carrying around with them all the time. What inspires them enough to take photos for fun when it’s also their day job?
The camera is one of those things that can’t really be separated from photography. In the same way as…street racing? Or some other kind of racing. The car matters to the driver. In the same way, the camera matters to the photographer. Gear matters and is important to the creative process of each individual.
But…its mattering less and less to the world. Now, more often than not, an expensive camera is a totem to clients that shows them we are worth the money. We may actually pull out our iPhone in the end, but as long as we are carrying around a $3000+ camera, we’ll be taken seriously. All media created now is for social media basically. Everything is about the small screen. The algorithm seems to even punish us for putting out something too polished, because it feels like an advertisement and is therefore less authentic.
Everything is a “look” now. A “film look”. A “low-fi look”. A “super-hi res look”. It’s all about what the goal of what you’re making is- it’s all about the job immediately in front of you.
I’ve changed a lot since starting this podcast last October. Basically, I’ve been focused a lot on printing for the past however long, nearly a decade now. But the fact is, printing isn’t what’s on photographers minds today. Episodes where I talk about printing have the lowest listens, no one watches my tiktoks and reels where I talk about printing. I know more about printing than most photographers because I do it more than most photographers, and yet, information about printing isn’t flooding the marketplace for a reason: No one is doing it. Not because they can’t, but because the mass of photographers aren’t interested in it. Plenty of money is being made from client work in this era. Printing is a “if I have time” thing. It’s a hobby, or a thing that photographers are always thinking about, but never get to it.
I grew up thinking I wanted to make my own thing and have freedom, and many young photographers today start by doing their own thing so they can at the end of the day, make stuff for big brands and corporations. In a conversation it’s cool to say you worked for a big brand, but it never seemed all that fun to me. I always saw work for a big brand to be a stepping stone to doing something on our own. I assisted on a few big commercial shoots in my 20s and decided it was too slow for me, I didn’t like all the standing around, so I swore it off. I decided I’d rather just take my chances figuring out being a successful photographer in my own way. Many photographers I respect got sick of that life at some point anyway which made them go out on their own, so why not just skip to the good part?
This life is hard. I’m only 31 and the photography world has already made me feel old. The camera I used during the Great Recession is cool again? Wait, did I just call the 2008 housing crash The Great Recession? I watched the Office when it was airing live on tv. I remember when Friends ended. I sat in a restaurant the other day and saw tables of college students around me using Snapchat. Do I need to be using Snapchat again? Wait, the goal of young people is to make videos that trend so they can sell ads for Squarespace or Shopify? That’s the dream? When did the dream stop being about trying to pioneer or just make something really cool in order to get The Man’s boot off their neck? So we want The Man’s boot on our neck? So wait, the goal is to now reverse engineer an algorithm so that we know what to make so we can get noticed by enough people so a giant corporation will pay us a ton of money?
Blahhh. It’s easy to go down the grumpy old man rabbit hole. Maybe the name of this podcast should have been Creativity is Dead. Because it feels like we have been willing to trade actual creativity for sweet sweet cashola.
But that’s where digi cams come in. I think, in a weird way, digi cams will save us, or at the very least, cause the pendulum to swing back around again. Film is mainstream again now. I went to a family wedding and my sister pulled out a disposable camera. So yeah, the fringes are going to digi cams because all their uncool family members are getting into the film trend. (I’m just kidding Caroline, you’re cool. You’d be cooler if you actually listened to my podcast though)
For a podcast called Photography is Dead, this whole project has been pretty optimistic. Photography right now is probably in a golden age of some kind. At least, I think we are living in the good times now and we’ll only realize that years from now. We can use any photographic tool we want, we all have a way to share our work, and we have more options when it comes to income streams now than ever. In order to make my “corporation-less” photography career work, I’ve been working on multiple passive income streams just with photography alone. In fact, just recently we launched Anderson Views, a stock photography website just for my growing town basically just full of local images for small businesses to use for marketing or whatever else. This year I’ve already hung a decent amount of my Small Town Photo Project office art as well. Basically, both these businesses are built on images I’ve already taken.
Then, I accidentally found a new income stream of making social media content for growing small businesses. I was doing it to help a friend, and then by the end of the week I had a small group of clients. That’s been interesting for sure, and mostly, iPhone-only.
I’m not sure my photography career could have existed a decade ago. There’s just more of a market for images now. Everything use to be so rigid, and now everyone looks at images in the way people kind of look at movies vs. tv shows- it’s really just a format on how to accomplish a goal or tell a story. Is a movie really all that different from a show? One is 2 hours and one is 10 hours, but really it’s up to the story on which one works best. Same for images. Images aren’t just “photography” now. They are whatever we need them to be based on whatever we need. The more open and fluid we are with the the varying types of tools and use cases, whether it’s digi cams or 150 megapixel super cameras, the better we will be able to navigate this very strange photography world.
The Quest
I listen to a lot of podcasts.
Like, seriously, a lot of podcasts.
I go through phases, I like current events and news, comedy, podcasts about movies, every once in a while, I listen to a photography podcast.
But I don’t really listen to a ton of photography podcasts, because it’s kind of tough to listen to “photography” stuff, and not only that, but there just aren’t a ton of them. But one genre of photography podcast I love is about film photography.
Film photography is so podcast-able because there’s so much more to talk about than digital photography. Digital photography gear is so… “same-y”. You either are into what the latest camera or the 2 or 3 year older model. And there’s only like 4 brands: either Canon, Sony, Fujifilm, or Nikon (yes, Nikon still exists. Maybe I’ll do an episode about my Nikon love soon)
But with film, you’ve got such a variety of things to talk about that could make any photographer drool: You’ve got a plethora of camera options and formats (medium format, large format, panoramic, square, 35 mm and so on), but you also have film “stocks” aka the film itself.
Most importantly though, you have the “quest”.
“The Quest” is dying in the modern age. “The Quest” was a pretty common experience with most things at one point- I think about movies. If you wanted a copy of a cult classic film, you couldn’t just rent it on Amazon or iTunes, you had to go on a hunt for a physical copy. That was the fun of buying things a couple decades ago, your want of a thing was bolstered by “the quest” for the thing.
Digital photography has none of that. It’s too new. It’s everywhere. Not only is digital photography gear not that interesting or rare, you can get whatever you need over a quick google search.
But film photography stuff is all discontinued. New film is being made, but it’s often made in batches and runs, so if you can get Lomo Purple film today, you made not be able to get it tomorrow. That Contax T2 point and shoot camera was decently affordable, but then Kendall Jenner started using one and the prices skyrocketed because…Contax doesn’t exist anymore, so there’s just a limited amount of these working cameras on earth.
Film photography is subject to basic economics in a way digital photography is not. (Well, unless you’re looking for a Fujifilm X100V right now)
Anyway, speaking of having what no one else has: I was listening to an old episode of The Analog Talk podcast where they were talking with Joe Greer.
Joe Greer is really interesting because he got started in photography BECAUSE OF instagram. He would travel the PNW (that’s what the cool kids call the Pacific Northwest) and take pics with his iPhone 4. And that was back before anyone knew what an algorithm was.
In this episode, he was talking about how he’s evolved a bit from landscapes to street photography. He had a really interesting observation: There’s no way anyone can recreate your street photography photos.
It sounds obvious, but as someone who shoots a lot of landscapes and architectural images these days for The Small Town Photo Project, I get what he’s saying.
Just this week in fact, I stumbled across a Facebook page that posted an image of an old building I found via my drone (of a small town) that I could have sworn was mine. The only difference was the color. Then I realized: they probably just found the same place I did, and took it from a similar angle. Did they copy my shot? Maybe. But it doesn’t really matter does it? That shot is able to easily be recreated either on purpose OR on complete accident.
I love those videos on TikTok where someone shows their beautiful images of a landmark like horseshoe bend or the Arches in Utah, then it cuts to a video clip of them standing next to 100 people shooting the same image. Landscape photography is quickly becoming “public domain” in a sense, and the only way to stand out is to just go to places that most people won’t. But then once you do it, they probably will start going there too.
Value in photography is getting harder to find. It requires getting more and more specialized and focused on one little corner of the world. Whether it’s small towns, or you shoot client work with only film. Or, even better, you are one of the lucky ones with a super unique style.
I’m not saying street photography is the answer: I’ve never been super interested in street photography for a long stretch because I feel like the images end up being so different, and in being so different, they sort of feel the same, you know what I mean? Only every once in a while do you see a really stand out street photography image.
Personally, that “quest” for your voice or a style is the most interesting part of photography. If you spend years and years chipping away to find who you are as a photographer, you’ll try out a lot of different things, and eventually all those things will add up together into you.
The popularity of film photography in the modern day is predicated on the gear, the film, the quest, and the process. The images are almost a by-product of the real joy of shooting film over digital.
Digital has so much power and infinite potential, so the sky is the limit. There’s no limit to the gear availability or editing tools. So, in digital photography, “The Quest” has to be “The Quest for Your Voice”.
Look through your social media, who do you follow? What styles of photography are you hitting “like” on the most? Sometimes we have a voice already, and we just don’t realize it.
Like I said in the intro episode: finding our value in photography takes a hard look at ourselves. And not just once either, but regularly.
Photography has gone mainstream...again.
I was jarred awake by my 4:55 am alarm.
I slowly and groggily got up with a moan and a sigh, but I was also full of the same excitement and hope I am for every day I get to wake up again. That’s not a joke either, we all have our depressed seasons, and I’ve certainly had mine, but mostly, I’m pretty excited about waking up every day despite the mornings being cold and my bed being warm.
I shuffled to the kitchen. Coffee Time. Writer of the show Billions and host of The Moment podcast Brian Koppleman calls the first cup of coffee of the day “The Royale”. (Not to be confused with a French Quarter Pounder at McDonalds). It’s that first creative jolt I get from The Royale that fuels most of these podcasts.
I’ve used a Chemex to make coffee for about 9 years now. Pour over coffee takes time, but I think there’s enough scientific evidence of the benefits of a handcrafted cup of coffee at this point. I once read a Yelp review that someone wrote about an Italian restaurant in a small town: It was a lament. The writer wasn’t angry about the formerly frozen Fizzoli’s-esque Italian meal he had at this restaurant, but rather, he used his short blurb to mourn for the people in the small town, that this was all they knew. He wept for them. That’s how I feel about people who still drink instant coffee in a Bunn coffee maker.
It’s a bad habit, but I always hit the phone in between pours. Gotta check out what happened past 9 PM last night. So I pulled out my phone to check out my daily Google alerts that I have set for all the things I’m interested in.
Suddenly, the earth began to quake.
In the first episode of this podcast, I talked about how I had a weird feeling about the state of photography. It just feels like the end of an era of some kind. Like flood gates are opening, destroying everything we knew and replacing it with…something else.
Two big things happened in the world of photography last week. The first was an NBC story that covered film photographers, interviewing Jason Kummerfelt aka grainydays on YouTube. Oh, the video was shot entirely on film too, by the way.
The video felt weirdly ancient, and not because they shot it on film. It was in that completely unappealing cable news style where you get no real depth into a subject, but you still walk away feeling like you can tell everyone you’re an expert now. Every grandparent you know is about to tell their grandchildren that some mysterious group of young people named “They” is back at it, and this time, “they” have all switched to shooting film instead of digital now, can you believe that?
Despite the weird out of touch nature of it, it was pretty cool to see film photography of all things be featured on national news. I’m not sure I remember a time where digital photography has been featured on the news other than maybe when a new iPhone comes out or when a wedding photographer gets mad at a rude couple and deletes their photos in front of them at the wedding. Granted, the already insane price of film is about to get more insane since they just aimed an even bigger spotlight on the growing demand, but anyone who buys film has already sold their first born into indentured servitude by now already.
The second thing I saw on my phone which added to my shock: Leica, the company known for those super expensive cameras you want, decided to re-release the Leica M6 camera AKA everyone’s favorite 35mm camera.
In one week, film photography was brought to the mainstream.
It was already creeping up, but I didn’t think that suddenly it would happen like this, like, within two days of each other.
Film photography has been living on this weird edge for a while, where it was even on the fringes of photography. Now, a big camera company is releasing a new $5,000 film camera, and an analog photography YouTuber was interviewed on your grandparents TV. Weird times, man.
This is a cool development though I think because it broadens the definition of photography, which has been a weird focus of mine lately.
What I mean is that, “photography” and the “photography industry” doesn’t really exist. Photography is so big at this point, and there are so many different facets of it.
This is a tease for an upcoming episode, but the industry is so siloed that there really aren’t “famous photographers” like there used to be. Photographers are pretty much only famous in their own universes nowadays- just try to ask your dad to name famous photographers he knows. How many of them are still alive?
Any time I tell people I’m a photographer, I always get asked, “Oh, so you shoot weddings?” And then I have to do all this work to explain, “No, I’m not that kind of photographer….”
That makes sense, because most people only interact with a photographer for family events, so the label “photographer” has been co-opted by that one particular lane of photography.
But now, because of NBC, those people will ask “Oh, you’re a photographer? Like you walk around neighborhoods in LA and shoot 35mm film with your Leica M6? What’s your favorite stock these days? I hear those Portra prices are nuts right now.”
What’s awesome about the 2022 world is that we have all the tools of the past as well as the present. There are no rules or limits on what we can do. Just take a lot of the movies and TV to come out in the past couple years for instance: Mank, The French Dispatch, Blonde, and Better Call Saul. All either have black and white elements or are completely in black and white. Better Call Saul especially was a spin-off of one of the biggest shows in the world, Breaking Bad, and it, for story reasons, had the final 4 or 5 episodes in black and white. It’s not just “indy” stuff that’s doing it. In the past, maybe black and white was the only option, now, if your story needs to be black and white, then why not?
Photography is the same in that we now supposedly have a growing film industry. That means, that film is here to stay for at least another generation, so there’s no rule that just because it’s modern day that we only have to use digital for everything. If your goal is to create successful images, good news! You have another photographic tool in your arsenal.
I’m seeing a lot more “hybrid shooters” these days. Digital photography is just easier, quicker, and cheaper, especially in a pinch. But when you have a moment to spare, I think the look of film is worth the time it takes. And whether people realize it or not, I think the look of film is what everyone wants anyway (or else VSCO wouldn’t exist).
And you may have one of those fancy coffee makers that you set up the night before that has a timer so you wake up to the smell of an ok cup of coffee in the morning, while I prefer to wake up and make a cup of coffee by hand. Both ways are right.
Well…my way is probably a little more right than yours.