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This digital stuff is all very well, but as I've said before, you lose skill and craftswomanship if you wander out and knock off any old pic because you can doctor it up on the computer at a later date.

I once saw the work of a photographer who'd done exactly that; he'd taken some poorly composed, and quite frankly, shite pictures, saying 'Oh it doesn't matter, I can do something in Photoshop with it later'. Whatever happened to standards? Eh? Eh???

I like the challenge of crafting something from what's in front of me; and if I produced a wonderful shot every time, where would the joy be? I accept the comments about chemistry-free atmospheres, but if you have adequate ventilation, this shouldn't be too much of a problem (and I'm hooked on the smell of darkrooms; feels like coming home to me). I like crafting my own prints with an enlarger. I can 'feel' what I'm doing, much like making custard. Any cook will tell you that you need to 'feel' the dish to see if it's right or not. I'm sure the Cheese Empress (Rhiannon) would agree with me on that one!

And it wasn't a digital SLR, it was one of those small square things.

Yours,

An old stick-in-the-treacle xx

Sorry Treaclechops, as I mentioned above, I wasn't referring to you, just replying to the Hob's comment on 'art'.

I can't compare film and digital, but as far as I know I can get closer to my own true vision at present with digital, and the quality is controlled by myself all the way. With digital it takes ridiculous amounts of time to translate the zone system into post exposure editing and printing, not to mention the pitfalls of colour space and cross-platform colour management, but saying that, I do have 'nth' amount of control over tints and the printing process, whether duotone, quadtone or whatever.

I can never see the issue over 'this vs that', when surely it's the things we make from 'this' and 'that' which ultimately count? I agree that there is a 'sacred space' and smelly things in a darkroom, which adds to the magic of production process.

Keep on keeping on!

Morfe x

I must admit that since having my digital camera I have become a git for taking loads of images. Whereas before I used go out and carefully take 36 photos and get 5 good ones I now go out and take 200 images and get 5 good ones.

If I was doing it for anything other than putting images on the web I'd be a lot more careful :-)