There have been many times where I’ve stood in a photography exhibit staring in awe at the images in front of me. Typically, they’d be made using analog processes. I’d read about using smoke in the darkroom, the wrong chemicals for cross-processing, expired film being used, etc. Analog photography allows for a million times more experiments gone wrongfully right — please read that statement again before you go on. And we all need to realize that digital photography is the result of companies trying to make something as clean and sterile as you possibly can so that you can add whatever you want later. It doesn’t allow for intention within the camera to happen as easily. And more importantly, it’s lead to monopolies controlling how we shoot and process images.
In the film days, you could use whatever developer you wanted or even make your own at home. In digital, you typically use Adobe or Capture One. And there isn’t much else beyond that worth discussing very much.
More importantly, you can’t develop a RAW file with the wrong chemicals. Instead, you tend to just get the results of whatever the software will give you.
In the film days, you could shoot with expired film and get a look that completely surprised you. In digital, there aren’t very many expired camera sensors. Sure, the Leica M9 had a sensor that suffered from corrosion and had white spots. But stuff like that doesn’t really happen anymore.
These days, you have to do it in-camera as much as the process allows you to do, or you have to do everything in post-production. Experimentation isn’t really a thing all that much anymore when it comes to making an actual photograph vs a composite or something else like that. Digital photography majorly limits the possibilities of the picture unless you know how to use a few tools. It won’t let you get experimental at all.
And I think that it’s time for digital photography to undergo quite a revolution outside of what AI is trying to do. It’s one of the best ways that we can really be humans and make human-work.
Social media algorithms haven’t made this much better at all because everyone is creating such similar work.
Digital photography is a simulation.