I think it was while I was still in college when my grandfather gave me his Zeiss Icon. I didn’t use it much while in school (I tested a roll or 2) because I was too busy in the studios. When I graduated, and became too busy shooting satellites, I was looking for something to spark the creative side. I broke out the Zeiss with a plan: keep it with me till I shoot an entire roll (12 shots on a roll of 120 Ilford Delta) then come home, process it in my basement darkroom, dry it, sleeve it, contact print it, develop it, dry it, scan it, crop it, and load it into a flash site I built – visualencounter.com.
I’m reminded of a lecture I heard where Ken White (I believe) was talking about the “disposable image” philosophy. As photographers (prior to digital becoming the standard) we shoot countless rolls of film. Thousands of frames. I know personally I’m happy when I could get 1 decent shot off a 36 exposure roll. I was going to school during the digital revolution. Now, as opposed to rolls and rolls of film, we had Megabites and Gigabytes full of images. Digital representations of film – to which we held sacred. Now, with the push of a button, we could shoot, check, keep or delete. Gone. Not a drop of chemicals used. Not a series of steps to preview a negative/positive, simply a click of a button. As photographers we had to come to grips with the concept of disposable images.
I came across visualencounter when I implemented recent tracking analytics to a number of my sites. It hit me that what took me hours to accomplish 6 years ago takes me 3 minutes now. I shoot a low resolution image on my Canon 20D, connect via USB to my wife’s MacBook, make minor adjustments in iPhoto (sorry, i don’t have PSCS2 on her Mac), and upload to my Blogger page. Instant “digital”darkroom. Instant gratification, not unlike Polaroid used to be for those that could afford it (I’m talking SX-70 days).
I collect these cameras to remind me of where photo has come from and where it’s headed. I also just like old cameras. The simple truth that I can pick up any of these cameras today and find film for them, process them using chemicals I can get via mail order, and print them on silver based paper is amazing. The way things are headed, that simple truth will be a story I tell my kids when they ask “so, you used to soak paper in chemicals to get pictures??”