Some things are better left alone..

There is no doubt that today’s photography is quite amazing. The fact that you can shoot a night shot handheld (not this one) is just one of the many ‘advances’ that photography has made. But in the last 20 years I see nothing that makes photography better. More convenient may be, but not better.

In this digital age, we often over look the print, which for me is the most important thing in photography. A photograph is not a photograph until it is printed, but therein lies the problem. Having started out as a black and white printer back (and also color C type) in the 90’s I have watched the steady decline in good printing along with the closure of most traditional photo labs. We can argue until we are blue in the face over film and digital (not better just different), but a wet printing process will always trump the likes of an inkjet, the crudest method of printing as well as the most popular. these printers will never get close to a traditional print in terms of tonal range, color rendition and lets not forget archival qualities (100 years my eye). And then when they breakdown, which they will, they cannot be repaired, or will cost as much as a new printer. And then there’s the ink prices! We can be fooled by all the fancy ‘fine art’ papers to distract us from the image, but at the end of the day you wont better methods that have been around for more than a century.

Somethings just cannot be improved, but that doesn’t stop people from trying..