Digital ~ The Other Black and White Meat

It was my uncle Don who, for reason's he took to his grave, introduced me to photography when I was just this side of ten years old. Accidentally or otherwise he planted the seed.

It was 1968. The year Neil Armstrong was asking his manager at NASA "You're sending me where?".

That year my uncle and his wife visited the family and, I still remember the moment vividly, out of the blue Uncle Don and I zipped out to a toy store and he bought me a basic black and white dark room kit. It had everything needed to create nifty 4x6 B&W prints. Developer, stop bath, fixer, negative tank, paper, nifty and dreamy red Safe Light that I could screw into the fixture of what, until then, had been the downstairs bathroom.

I dunno. Maybe it's different these days but being 10 years old in 1968 and having not only my own Safe Light (tm) but a Dark Room to boot was a pretty kick ass feeling.

I wish I had asked him what motivated him to buy me such a pivotal present. I'm an uncle four times over now and wonder if something as powerful as my love for my nephews and nieces was at the core of his gift. Or was it just guilt at work? The dark room kit was, as best as I can recall, the first and last gift he ever bought me.

Regardless. We were both together at that moment and thanks to him I suddenly had the chance to discover a magical world in the reverse order that most experience photography. Rather than taking pictures and then developing them I developed my dad's negatives into prints and then wanted a camera to create my own pictures.

I wonder. Had there not been an Uncle Don would my love for photography exist?

Uncle Don planted the seed but it was my dad and mom that nurtured that seed into it's first bloom. They bought me the camera needed to create my own negatives and accepted me blacking out the basement windows in our house for years in order to have my own in-house dark room.

Thanks Mom and Dad. You did good.

Things are changing quickly though in the world of photography and what was a wonderful, solitary but strangely intimate technology of my early days is now all but consumed by the cool crisp world of the computer. Don't get me wrong. I love computers. My working world has, for many years, been nothing but computers and, for the most part, has delivered nothing but a totally enjoyable way to make tons of money.

But the technology that has been my most enjoyable hobby for nearly 40 years - print film - is on the wane. The biggest impact I've seen so far is the effect on black and white photography. There are killer films of the 20th century you can't get anymore. Ack!! Kodak's classic B&W Hi-Res Infra Red film .... gone. Konica 750 near-IR film .... gone along with Minolta and Konica. Ilford's SFX-200 near-IR film ... brought back by popular demand.

I guess what I'm saying is ... if you have even the slightest tingle of an urge to rediscover your film roots in photography go for it. Now. Don't walk to the photo lab ... run.

The first image in this post was taken with a Canon A530 digital in B&W mode. The second and third images were taken with an old school Nikon F100 with Kodak Infra Red film and, along with it's 35 cousins on the same roll, was a photo moment that was nothing short of magical.

Can the world of digital photography give me this again? ... I think it can.

Unfortunately it was such a technical challenge to use that I waited for when 'the time was right' to try it again.

Well, Kodak does not make the film anymore and even though the time is now right I'm, unfortunately, technically screwed. I can't buy the media needed to express my art.

Cry.

It's like a painter discovering that he can't buy acrylic paints anymore.

"Sorry pal. Everyone loves the new 10.x Photoshop Acrylic Plug-In and no one's buyin' the paints anymore."

Argh.