The Best Photographs have already been taken.

This post sort of goes along the same lines as my previous post about technology and cell phones, and how our current world is moving at a too accelerated pace.

Maybe as I get older, some of the principles that my grandfather tried to teach me when I was younger are starting to make sense now. Growing up a true Texan farmer on a large piece of property outside the small town of San Augustine, TX, my grandfather "Papa" often made comments that "things just ain't the way they used to be". He told me lots of stories of how he walked to school every day, through sleet, rain, snow, and mud. It was 3 miles from his family's farm to the one room school-house that housed all 12 grades. He was a true believer in hard work, having to get up before dawn to tend to all the livestock and other animals along with their huge vegetable gardens. He lived a hard yet well rewarded life.

As he got older though, the pace of the world around him was beginning to pass him by and I could tell he was uncomfortable with all the rapid changes. All the gadgets and tools that make things so easy seemed to take the joy out of projects leaving him stuck in the past, or as some people say "stuck in his own ways". I am starting to understand this more now than ever.

When I was a teenager (I think around 13) my other grandparents, Nana and Grandad gave me my first real nice 35mm film camera made by Minolta. In fact I still have this camera even today, and I would boldly say that it is becoming an antique. As I grew up, I took tons of pictures every time we went on vacations or visited family. Both my mom and my grandparents told me that I had a natural talent taking pictures, and they reinforced this over and over through the years. I remember the excitement of getting the film developed after a family trip to see what I had captured. Even then it took a couple of days for even one roll of 24 pictures to develop. This just isn't true anymore. Processing film is almost completely obsolete.

In the early nineties my dad, who has always owned a good film camera, passed down to me a Nikon FE3 camera. This was a major deal to me because it was such a good camera and I couldn't believe that my dad was giving it to me. This was one of the last truly great film cameras out there before digital cameras came onto the scene. Again I used it anytime I traveled or went somewhere interesting. Even as a started college and went through a rough time trying to sort out "my path" in life I seriously considered enrolling into the photography program as my major concentration. I didn't do it, but I did take a bunch of photography courses that all utilized black and white film only. I learned how to process and develop my own film, along with learning how to print and produce my own images in the darkroom. It was quite an experience looking back on it now. Even then digital cameras were very rare and they were seen as a fad that could never overtake film in quality or marketability. Sadly it happened. The funny thing is that I remember thinking it was kind of neat to be able to see my pictures on a screen right away, and if I wanted to print them I just took in the camera's memory card and they printed it out like the film cameras.

In my short lifetime, photography has gone from an obscure art form that took several skills, such as a steady hand, a keen eye and an understanding of light and metering, into an everyday household item that only takes the skill of aiming and pressing a button. It has been made into an easy hobby that anyone can pick up with a few hundred dollars to burn. The number of images taken are now seemingly endless. If you don't like the picture you just took, try it again right away and delete the bad one. Do it a thousand times if you like. If you want to capture a moving object or an athletic event, just hold down the shutter and rattle off 40-50 pictures in a dozen seconds or so. You are bound to capture something interesting. Even when you don't think your picture looks good enough, no worries, just use a computer program to clean it up and add color to it and make it look the way you want it. There is absolutely no sense of mystery left in the final photographic product, unless you think highly edited photos are mysterious. I guess one could argue that editing photos has now become the true art form, because the initial product can be captured by a blind 5 year old (when shown where to point the camera and how to push the button).

There will always be new situations that will lend new and amazing photos, however they will have been taken with less soul and with less appreciation of the true mechanics that it took when film cameras were around and before computers could edit everything. Taking a good photograph now is not hard nor is it complex. The days of only getting "one shot" to capture something amazing have fallen to the wayside.
Its too bad we think things always need to be made easier and easier.
I think it was better back when film was all we knew.