A conversation and reading a recent post by a friend got me thinking about a bunch of things. Film--what is the reason to still teach our students about developing and making prints from what seems to be antiquated technology--using film. I admit I'm a diital convert. Truth is I can do more with digital in my work than I ever could with film. But film has qualities that cannot be duplicated with digital cameras. I won't say its better or worse--just different and unique. Film isn't constructed in squares or grids like a digital image is--so there fore it is just different. Affects look and feel different. Again--not saying they're better--they are just different. Serendipity in the process is also something lost in digital production and the idea that an image might not be able to be made any better is not longer the case in digital. There was a point that the processes in film and paper seemed to bring an image to a closure--no longer. In the digital world we can do any number of things to improve, or change or alter an image. Film grain seemed to do what it needed to do, but digital noise seems unnatural and it has an edge(now with more and more refinements this is less and less). This image was shot on film about 6 years ago as I was getting work together for a show I was having with Harmony Motter at the Academy Theatre. I posted it today be cause I stumbled upon it while looking for another image that was in that show. Harmony posted a couple days ago about how when she was younger she just wanted to make pictures and didn't really do it for any other reason than she wanted to and wanted to express herself artistically. When I looked at this image, which wasn't even in the show I felt that ideology of wanting to make something for really no other reason than experimenting in finding personal imagery. Some work--some don't. There is something special about that approach. It is similar to film that way. You try something--you process an idea or film and see what you get. Artists sketch and write in journals. Photographers shoot pictures! Its a great thing. Photograph of a projected image od my friend onto some gears from a washing machine. 2005 by Richard Sayer.