Audrey Penven

I finally turned off the automatic preview on my digital SLR. It was crippling me, and I didn’t realize it. The photos are better now. At least, to my eyes.

I’ve been photographing on film longer than I’ve known how to read or write. Expressing myself in English feels so clunky compared to what I can do with a camera. I suppose that’s my way of apologizing for the possible sloppiness of the words to follow. I’ve been using the delete key far too much in this blog post. That relates very much to the concept I’ll eventually get to.

I hate certain aspects of digital. Instant gratification is great. The ability to review what was just done and use that information to adapt is wonderful. In theory.

For me, photography has always been about the quickness of the mind, creating an image in a thin slice of time. Once the shutter goes, it’s permanent. Sure, I can manipulate the image later, but I can only really refine what was done when the photons hit the film.

The lesson of painting class was that I am not a painter. As long as I could continue fucking with the image, I would do so. It would turn to mud. The turning point happened when I struggled with a still life for weeks. There were points in time when it was good, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. It was imperfect, and maybe, just maybe, if I pushed some more paint around, it would get better. In a fit of frustration, I pulled out my camera, photographed the still life and ran off to the darkroom. I glued the photo onto the canvas, sloppily dripped some paint on it, kicked it around on the floor of the studio, and called it done. My professor responded better to that painting than anything else I’d done that semester.

I know my tendency to get caught up in analyzation. This doesn’t work when using film. It doesn’t work with anything really, it’s just easier to pretend in some other contexts. Film camera in hand, I need to trust that I know what I’m doing, so I do. By the time I can check up on it, that moment is long gone.

And there’s the danger with digital. When the LCD screen flashes the photo before I can move the camera away from my face, I look at it. I break my connection with what I’m photographing. I am no longer creating – I’ve switched into analyzation mode. It may only be for a second, but reestablishing a connection takes longer than that.

At Sand by the Ton, I caught myself compulsively looking at the screen as trapeze dancers performed above my head. What? With something so dynamic, what information could I possibly gain by staring at a little screen? The time for review is later. It’s like trying to run while watching your feet. I looked away from the performers for a few moments more. The preview had to die, immediately.

The first few shots after that were kind of scary. What if something was set wrong? What if I could make it better somehow? To comfort the screaming, insecure thing in my head, I grabbed the familiar Contax film SLR that hung by my right hand. Oh right, I do this all the time. Shut up screaming thing.