Duly Noted, Dept.: It's Vintage, So It's Cool

"NEW YORK—Following Novak Djokovic throughout his career has been a little bit like watching a museum-grade black-and-white photograph being developed in the darkroom of a master photographer. The photo paper with the latent image is slipped into a chemical bath and gradually a picture emerges, sometimes so slowly that you don’t notice how substantially the final image differs from the rough, early outlines.    

"So it goes with Djokovic, the all-time men’s Grand Slam singles champion and No. 2 seed at this US Open...."

—Peter Bodo, "Novak Djokovic, The (More) Perfect Player," at Tennis.com

 

I like that metaphor! At a gathering tonight, I told a darkroom story, and mentioned that I was talking about the ancient past, and not one but two people (one a teacher, I assume, the other a recent student) spoke up and said no, film-based photography and darkroom work are being taught at their schools. "It's coming back!" said one. "It's vintage, so it's cool," said the younger one.

Just commenting on the passing scene.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Albert Smith: "In my post-retirement life, I got a part-time job with a large part of the workforce being made up of college students. Several were taking photography at a school that has a great program, enticing many world-famous photographers to give lectures and workshops. While digital made up the bulk of the lessons, all were required to shoot B&W film and learn the basics of developing and printing at the school's darkroom. This is where I became very popular with many, since I have dozens of film cameras that I lent to the kids for their lessons so they could skip the expense of buying something that they may never use again. I enjoyed hearing the students telling me how impressed the instructors were when they came in with high-end Nikons and Leicas contrasted with the usual Pentax K-1000 class bodies which were suggested."

Edward Taylor: "Mike—This will sound ridiculous to you, but I think you should switch to off-topic posts and sprinkle in a bit of photography. Now that phones exist, interest in dedicated camera photography is dying. You are a writer. People will read your writing. I like your off-topic posts. I already know just about everything about photography.

"Look at how successful blogs have been. They don't even have a 'topic.' They are all off-topic!"

Mike replies: I looked into starting a new site using a popular platform. After I signed up I hit a page that said, "Launch your site faster using AI. Answer a few questions to quickly create unique text for your site." Oi. Maybe I should start a blog called OI, for "Organic intelligence."

Comments

[Dr__Nick]

Too bad film prices are so high. I guess once they lost the volume sales, film production becomes very uneconomic. Probably a warning for what is going to happen to internal combustion vehicles and repair and labor costs when electric vehicles become mainstream.

[Patrick Dodds]

Speaking of the passing scene, (slightly) tangentially to this, I was wondering if those of us who have ever uttered or thought "no one cares how hard you worked" when considering the merits of a picture* will have to change this mantra now that that AI has entered the chat. There is no doubt that AI can imitate or even surpass the best of photographers: what does this mean for the future?

*I may first have come across the phrase here, used by Ctein I think.

[Stephen Jenner]

I don't believe that it ever went away Mike.

The larger formats have always been film based.

[Stephen Jenner]

Further to my last comment; it looks like the website that I recommended is not being maintained any more.

This one is better: https://www.healthscience.org/where-to-water-fast/

As I said, there are a good number of references to this form of healthcare, that can be elicited via Google.

[Wayne Bruzek]

Interesting book on ageing research:

https://amzn.to/3sHWSQh

[Arg]

Yep, retro-cool is a big thing these days, in everything from fashion to technologies like photography and hifi.

[Mike Stone]

Shuttered my professional darkroom in 2001. Last month I offered a film processing workshop through my artist collective in Ayrshire, Scotland. It was a sell out.

We have now acquired a space to build a full darkroom, which I hope to have running by the end of the year and we’re running monthly processing courses to be followed by a full range of darkroom and alternative processing workshops. It does seem to be a bit of a thing at the moment, thank heavens I kept my old notebooks.

[Bill Bresler]

There does seem to be a resurgence of film photography. The limiting factor is the high cost of film. My beloved 400TX 120 is up to 9 bucks a roll at B&H. Back in 2011 when a big price increase was on the way I bought 100 rolls at a little less than $3 per roll and stuffed it in the freezer. I'm down to my last 5 rolls. It's true that I'm now shooting much less film and a lot more digital, and I have not made a darkroom print since 2015.
Not sure where I'm headed with film, but best wishes to the kids. I've been given several Canon, Nikon and Pentax SLRs and I always pass them along to high schoolers.

[Jack Mac]

Darkrooms were more lust generating than cameras.

I bought a house in part to get a really well designed but small stainless steel darkroom.
I once tried to date a very personable and attractive young lady. The real turn on was she had the most incredible darkroom in her home. I sadly made no progress perhaps because my temporary darkroom was in in the same class. But oh man, I really wanted to get into her darkroom.

[Grant]

If you ever dare to use AI for your posts, then I will have good reason to drop my Patreon support.

I may have questioned if your intelligence was artificial in regards to some posts that have made my blood boil, but at least that was analog AI. Analog I can deal with.

[JH]

Now that AI is on the top of the "hype heap" I have told this story many times, maybe here too - if so I apologize.

Back around 1990 I attended a seminar at the MIT Media Lab about a new group looking at creating advanced software they called "Artificial Intelligence." As one of many skeptics in the audience, my comment to the speaker and attendees was "I will believe in "Artificial Intelligence" when someone can convince me "Natural Intelligence" exists.

Still true, IMHO.

[Kenneth Voigt]

I second Edward Taylor

[Richard Parkin]

I have read that AI can be useful as a way to stimulate creativity rather than asking it to produce a finished product.