2004-03-25 - 17:36

The Darkroom is cooler than you are.

I love slide film for two reasons. The first reason is practical, once the film is developed you're done. That's your finished product. Done. done. done. The second is aesthetic. Slides are luminous. There's just something about light passing through an image that makes it look that much cooler.

There are drawbacks of shooting slide film, though. They are harder to show off. Prints are much easier to bore people with; you can hold them captive with prints. Whereas slides, if you don't have the proper equipment people are easily bored with the twisting and turning required to find a light source that allows you to see the image unobstructed. Well, bored isn't the right word. More, the amount of effort required is disportionate to the interest in the images. And this I understand completely. I take notes on my film and I keep my notes with the finished results. I rarely sit down and look and everything at once. Looking for a picture of someone? Just go through the list, find the number of the slide you are looking for and bam! you're there.

The other drawback is this. I don't have my own scanner. I am fortunate enough to know people with scanners, though. This however means that I'm using their computers and their software. Software I am unfortunately not familiar with. You see where this is going. Well, the slide isn't that dark, how come the image is that dark? Try again. huh, that didn't help Try again. And then I reach the point where the level of effort required as surpassed the level of my interest in scanning. Why scan a slide, when you've got photos from another tournament already on cd?

I have come to the conclusion, though, that I may have to invest in a digital camera. It will just have to happen.

It was a good day in the darkroom, though. The project that I was working on prior to going on this little trip may have just been blest with a few more images. We'll see tomorrow after I've printed up some proof sheets. I LOVE the darkroom. It is just too wicked cool.

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Artificial Sound for the Artificial World:

Still more noir than you are.