Anybody into photography

[sofa]

I am just wondering if any one is a photographer on here? Photography is a side business of mine and I mainly do portraiture.

[headheldhigh01]

Affirmative, though I do chiefly nature stuff.  D80 with 28-200 and a coolpix when I'm trying to lighten the load.  I may be part Japanese  ;-) 

[Paa_Paw]

I did years ago but I used black and white film almost exclusively and thought of myself as a new Ansel Adams. Actually my stuff was no comparison to his work.

I did do some portraits in B&W printing them using my own developers to produce sepia tones usually on ivory paper rather than white.

There were other things that were better suited to my skills and Photography lost my interest.

Among other things, I was having problems finding 120 roll film for my old fashioned camera.

There are still a small number of Portrait Photographers who use film, but it is fast becoming a lost art. Even less are the nature photographers.

When a person was limited to a set number of exposures on a roll of film, a picture was usually carefully composed. The trend with digital photography is to shoot hundreds of images in the hope of getting one that is worth keeping.

Sad.

[headheldhigh01]

mmm, maybe.  me, i don't miss the days of agonizing over whether i could afford four rolls of film for a trip, deciding to skip shots i should have taken, tearing my hair out when a beautiful shot got a crappy development. 

in fact i don't even miss the days when i had a "huge" 128M card for my camera.  photography just was not meant to be the exclusive province of those with hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to pour into a private darkroom. 

the fact is i now get way better shots than i used to.  in fact some of mine - imho - rival magazine quality of years ago just because of the advantages they enjoy.  if the price to be paid is that anyone can take decent stuff if they put an ounce of effort into it, i accept. 

the only thing i miss about film is the better light range.  that's it.  for i'm willing to make the trade. 

ymmv   

[Paa_Paw]

My darkroom was a walk-in closet.  It was only dark enough to use reliably late at night after the rest of the family was in bed. Almost everything except the enlarger was improvised; it was very old and purchased from a second hand store.

The advantage of doing my own developing was that I had control of everything and I could deliberately under or over develop. I had control of the contrast, The weight, color and texture of the paper etc. even the color of the print on the paper.

It was great fun, but I was not really all that good at it and lost interest many years ago.