Mechanical Cameras

Digital revolution?  How many revolutions have to come yet?  What will be next?  In what way will any revolution change the very basic way in which a photograph is made?  Will it do away with aperture?  How about shutterspeed?  Digital simply replaced the media that captures the image.  So far, things are still the same.

However, the change will arrive in the shape of... 

A mechanical camera!

Even though I've been chronicling the seasons in this town (because my M4-2 has remained inactive due to its need of a CLA), I still ponder why I use film, and where photography can go after digital.  I do not think film will recover its preeminence, but then, it won't go away.  Just like LPs, it will stay for a long time yet, because it happens to have that particular "hand-made" quality about it that digital lacks.  

Brains instead of computers

Let's all hang onto our film gear.  Film isn't gone yet... and there's charm in graininess.  Otherwise, how to explain that a print of Lee Friedlander's may sell for thousands of dollars in a Christie's auction?  Subject matter (a young, nude Madonna?), or the fact that it's an artifact of the past?

' later!

Street photograph=people shots?

Here comes the question of the week: are people necessarily part of street photography?

Some have said that street shots should document the streets.  To me, the streets are nothing without people.  Those who think otherwise can take a peek at the Atget photographs of Paris and decide on their own. 

Here we can see some examples of people in the streets of Chicago; the first shows a group of people looking up... all of them, at the same time!  Why?  The Air and Water Show (and the Blue Angels hovering over town... quite noisily).  Then, a young couple having their picture taken in Millenium Park (some family history started right there and then).  The following one shows a man who plays chess with multiple mates not far from the Art Institute, and the second portrays two fellows in wait of customers for their tour of Chicago in an open bus.  Both are street scenes, both present the life in downtown, what those who live in the Loop see every time they step out of their apartments.  These are the images that won't be remembered easily.  Sometimes I wonder what would Chicago look like on the screen, just in case someone in the year 2080 wanted to film a movie set in the Loop in the early 21st century.

They'd need my photos, of course!