The vast majority of my work was on slide film, the few I printed were done with no darkroom enhancements.
I did do a lot of B/W print work but the majority of that was using Ilford SFX, I did intentionally boost the contrast when I was printing but I did very little in the way of dodging and burning.
I'm not sure that I have accomplished anything significant, I've been shooting for a long time but that doesn't make me particularly good. I do have some shots that I do believe are good, a couple have been published and a couple have won competitions but generally I just try to produce well-exposed, correctly cropped photographs that tell a story.
You asked what was different about digital processing and darkroom processing, well, nothing, except digital is a heck of a lot more convenient. I have nothing against processing but I believe that if people strive to produce work that doesn't need it that can only make them better photographers, I prefer to have a good photograph right out of the camera, like the one I posted in this thread: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=146944
Yep, I started somewhere, with a box Brownie shooting 127 B/W film.
Hm.
Let's consider something outside of photography for a moment... perhaps it will strike some of the emotion from the conversation.
I play trumpet and have for about... jeez, almost 30 years now. Damn, I'm old.I happen to have a fairly nice horn... a Vincent Bach Silver. Can't remember the model number, but it ran about $2500 new a good 20 years ago. Beautiful instrument.
Anyway...
(by the way the following course of events has happened to me NUMEROUS times, so I'm not making this up... I'm just condensing it into one representative example)
Imagine the scenario with me and someone who has been playing for just a few years. (or even 5-8 years, for that matter). Assume the person is playing a standard old ~$300 Brass Yamaha or King student horn. Good, solid workhorse of an instrument. Nothing wrong with it.
I can sit next to the person and play on my VB while they play on their King/Yamaha. During a break the person turns to me and compliments my playing and says "I really need to get one of those Vincent Bach Silver trumpets." I smile, and say "You're welcome to play it if you like, just trade horns with me."
They get all excited and agree to swap. (I let go a sigh of relief as I get to hold a much lighter trumpet for a bit.
We play the next piece. I usually marvel at how generally good the $300 instrument is, and I can always push the horn to it's limits and get really good sound out of it, but I often find the valve mechanism and little rough and usually can't get QUITE the rich tones out of the horn that I can get out of my Vincent Bach. However, usually the student brass horns are brighter and lighter, so they're fun for marches as it's easier to make it sound chipper, whereas my Vincent Bach silver tends to want to be deep and somber and rich.
I notice that the person who is playing my horn is not sounding any better than usual, and in fact is struggling a bit to get as full of a tone as I can get on the horn because it simply requires stronger breath support to really fill the instrument up. It's certainly "fine", and they're getting the music out, it's just not any better.
At the end of the piece, the person hands the horn back to me and looks baffled. They usually then ask me how much I paid for the horn, are shocked, and then say something along the lines of "Geez, it really isn't any better than the my Yamaha... I guess it's the player, not so much the horn." Sometimes they'll even be obnoxious and say "Geez, what a waste of money! I can get just as good music out of my Yamaha!"
It's like this with so many things... how many of you have kids who think you're stupid and don't know what the hell you're talking about? How many of you have been kids and were pretty sure your parents were utterly stupid? Did you get stupid as you grew older, and now your kids have simply surpassed you? Hmmm? Is the same thing going to happen to them?
No, of course not.
What we see in all of these kinds of situations is experience in action.
Experience is a real curse, because without the experience that someone who is your better in a given practice, you cannot really tell how much better they are. You might be able to say "Oh yeah, that trumpet player plays really beautifully", but you may not be able to tell that there is literally 15+ years of experience worth of improvement between you and him until you have that extra 15+ years of experience.
You also won't really be able to tell that yes there absolutely is a difference between the $300 and $2500 trumpet, simply because you haven't got enough experience under your belt to get everything out of that $2500 horn, whereas the guy 15+ years your senior will not only be able to tell, but will be able to make your $300 horn seem to come to life.
(Yes, that is a commentary on equipment vs. the user of same.)
In my experience, people who attain true mastery of any thing often have some very similar characteristics...
I need two more to make it a "7 Habits of Highly Effective Artists".
- They always feel their work is "fine", but are always feeling like they could have done better if only they could master X or Y.
- They look at their absolute masterpieces and say things like "Yeah, this one's really not bad... I like it."
- They actively seek opportunities to learn from others, and accept those opportunities graciously.
- They never disregard or argue with any criticism... no matter who it comes from.
- They never poo-poo any other method/type of tool/whathaveyou, but rather look to understand it better because there may well be something buried in there that they don't understand that will allow them to improve.
- True masters strive to be able to teach others, because being able to teach a concept strengthens mastery of that concept.
Where does this leave us? Same place it always does.
Accept that no matter how good you think you are, that there are other people in this world who are better. Accept that you must choose to either grow in what you do, or choose to be happy with where you are. Accept that to grow, the first thing you must do is listen, and the last thing you should be doing is yelling at people who are trying to help you.
Accept that nearly everything you say, do or produce in life (that you were proud of at the time) is something you're going to look back later on and think "Oh man what a mess, I could have done that so much better.".
Accept that no matter how workable your equipment is, that there is a reason why some equipment costs $300, some $2500 and some way way over that. Accept that the reasons for why something costs so much more may simply be something that you cannot grasp because you lack experience. Accept that this is perfectly fine.
Accept that there is nothing wrong with the tools that you use today, but that someday your experience will exceed what your tools can provide you, and that you're going to want new and better tools. Accept that the day this happens should be a very cool day for you, because it means you have learned so much.
Be happy.
Listen to others.
Accept what they have to say.
Learn.
Grow.
Be happy.
Yeah but it got autocensored, so no one could tell.
