Digital Photography for Travelers- Digital vs. Film

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”  ~Ansel Adams

  The digital revolution in photography has both fans and critics. The ease with which a digital photograph can be manipulated and altered has rocked some people’s confidence in the authenticity of the captured moment. The digital age is a storyteller that can’t always be trusted; a dramatic embellisher whose high contrast overly saturated tales sometimes seem too good to be true… but it is also a worldly traveler, teacher, and historian that reaches a wider audience than any of it’s media ancestors ever dreamed of. 

   I came by my acceptance of digital photography and my caution for published words simultaneously. I was already living in Costa Rica when I was introduced to the pixel pushing instant gratification version of a camera that was touted as the latest in technology. The tropical humidity and eco-guilt of disposing of darkroom chemicals had slowed my inner photographer down long enough to make me open-minded to the idea of the micro mosaics as the future of photography. I don’t think they had even arrived at the term “mega-pixel” yet, as there clearly wasn’t anything “mega” about these pixels other than their size, nearly visible to the naked eye. I made a pinhole camera in college that took better pictures, but speed and convenience were the selling points here. In 1999 I received a phone call from Rolling Stone magazine, which wanted me to take pictures for an article (they had chosen Jaco as one of their Spring Break 1999 destinations) and they needed the photos the same day. (It should be noted here that my main qualification at the time was that I was the only person in Jaco that owned a digital camera!) Back then Jaco was a tiny town, and finding six gringos that could pass for Spring breakers was actually a challenge. It took most of the day and the promise of free booze to round them up. I sent the photos off by email the same day, a task that seemed much more impressive ten years ago, and got one crappy little photo (probably one of the worst photos I’ve ever taken) published. When I finally got a copy of the magazine and saw the photo sandwiched between a beautiful stock photograph of a surfer on a wave (not even in Costa Rica) and an article that was (obviously to me) written by someone that had never been to Jaco, I realized that my digital photo, despite being slightly staged and inebriated, was the only genuine moment that ever happened in that story. Photos, even digital ones, take a lot more work to manipulate than words.

 All of the revolutionary technology that helps us enhance and intensify the moment in time that a

photograph freezes can only do that... highlight the captured moment. It is up to you the photographer to seek those magic moments out. There is an endless bounty of them all around you. “Having the eye”, artistically speaking, is the ability to spot them, and the components of a photograph (f-stops, shutter speeds, white balance, etc.) are nothing more than the language you use to describe that moment. Since the stories my photographs tell are about people, places, or moments that I experienced, I choose to use the language of the camera with only minor post production accents (that aren’t really any different than what is done in a darkroom). I prefer to spend my time out looking for the next glimpse of the “soul of the world” rather than hunched over a computer pushing an image to the place where photography ends and digital art begins.   

  My advice to novice photographers is to get out there and take a lot of photos. Seriously, keep that trigger finger moving. Experiment. Change settings. Move around. Look for new angles to see the world. The only way to figure your camera out is to try every option and adjustment it has. Photography is a numbers game; ask any photographer and they will tell you, for every one great shot they have they discarded hundreds if not thousands of others. Digital’s greatest advantage over film is the ability to experiment and take unlimited numbers of photos without the worries of processing or developing costs. It is also an instant teacher, as every setting is recorded and each photo is immediately available for review. The other benefit of taking so many photos is that adjusting the camera settings becomes second nature. When you do see that shot you’ve been looking for you’ll express it fluently, and get photographs that are beautiful enough to not warrant cosmetic photo surgery. 

The first question I am usually asked when people see this photograph is if I manipulated it in Photoshop. The answer is no. While hiking in Patagonia I saw two clouds cross paths, and for less than two seconds they formed a perfect heart. Keep your camera with you, and the lens cap off, and magic moments will present themselves.