The other day I received email from someone about my distressed photo technique. He argued it is much easier and faster to achieve this weathered look using his computer.
Well, I doubt it.
I know very well that working in a photo editor is not really such a fast and simple process. It might be more accessible and less complicated than working in the darkroom but any serious digital-editing buff will tell you it’s not a speedy and trouble-free process.
On the other hand, distressing a photo print is quite simple and even takes less than a minute.
All you need to do is rub down the photo with sandpaper, wrinkle a bit to create random creases, soak in coffee/tea and let dry in the sun.
There are of course other methods, but this one works quite efficiently.
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Whatever technique you have used here I love it! Keep up the good work.
I agree! For me, working with photos hands-on, in the darkroom, adds a whole new layer of thought and process to a photograph. It’s getting really in tune and “personal” with the photograph that I think makes film so fabulous.
As a serious digital editing buff, I must disagree with your stereotyping of digital editing buffs.
In the end, it shouldn’t matter how you make the image work. If it looks the way you want and it shows what you want to show, who cares how you do it? Technique is imortant, but makes no difference at all if the image itself sucks to begin with. otherwise, all that’s happening, digitally editing or physically changing, is that a bad image gets screwed with.
How you make it should mean nothing. What it shows should mean everything.
It does matter, though. Not because a physically-manipulated photo is better or worse than a digitally-manipulated photo, but because the process of the manipulation is critical to the vision of the artist (sorry to use that term, Nitsa).
Look at how passionate some people get when you try to compare digital with film and tell me that it doesn’t matter how you make the image work. You are correct that in the end, the art exists either way — but if anyone wants to know the vision behind the art (not always possible, certainly), the “how” is critical.
I’ve never understood why some people need to insist that they can achieve such-and-such technique easier/faster/more efficiently digitally than in the physical world. Sometimes it’s the journey to the image that matters as much as the image that comes out at the end.
This image is wonderfully tactile; I can almost feel the sandpaper scratches!
[...] Photo in Distress (Evening in Harlem) from Still alive [...]
Michael, I think they do that because there exists a bit of a stereotype against digital photography, even today, and for some reason the digital people care what the film snobs think.
You reflect the stereotype (unintentionally) in your own question when you don’t also ask why some people need to insist they can achieve such and such technique faster through physical manipulations — it’s the same question. People shouldn’t care either way. You can sculpt a statue in clay, bronze, wood, or ice — they’re all valid. It’s all about what inspires the artist.