I first gave in to digital photographs four days before I left England for Vietnam. I gave in for practical and financial reasons. I didn't want to, I was reluctant and ashamed. That was two and a half years ago. I am more ashamed that, having been back from that trip for almost two years my film SLR remains under my old bed at my Mum's house. It's too easy to stay with digital but I wonder what the consequences are....
The digital camera interrupts the long moment, and panders to our vanities. Where a film camera will capture an instant and leave it there, a digital camera demands to be looked at, it demands attention, screaming and shouting from the table that you can see the images immediately. So instead of carrying on with the day / drink / conversation, we huddle around the camera looking, zooming in, deleting, editing.
We are editing our memories, we are editing before we had time to process. Deleting too early what could become the missing pieces of a story, the telling smile or glance that 'spoils' a photograph in the instant but could be capturing the prelude to something that will happen in the future.
What are we losing? Does it even matter?
Thursday 28 August 2008
Tuesday 12 August 2008
Falling in love
I never saw my home town until I stayed away too long...
- San Diego Serenade, Tom Waits
It usually takes something or someone else to give you a new perspective on home and what it means to you. Leaving home to go to University across the hills, I welcomed the concrete and the rain and the freedom of my new found city home; this feeling only ever interrupted in those three years for the split second on trips home as my father's car would round the bend and open up the winding road to the village where I grew up.
A hand printed photograph of those hills, given to me before I went travelling, was forgotten until someone found it at the back of my journal, on the other side of the world, and made me look at it properly, and make me home sick.
But looking at a view or a photograph of a view isn't the same as looking at your home town through someone else's eyes.
We had hired the cheapest vehicle we could, more roller skate than car, but in the end this made the weekend more fun, and probably saved my excess a few times. Planning these things too much raises expectations and invites disappointment, I should have known my hills would speak for themselves. I thought we'd need a soundtrack, but the roller skate seemed to disagree and ate the CD before we'd even filled the tank.
Avoiding motorways and taking to the back roads, Yorkshire didn't let me down; as we crossed the border we were suddenly sharing the road with sheep, the clouds became more dramatic and everything grew. I couldn't imagine seeing this for the first time and was glad I wasn't. I was actually proud of being from Yorkshire for the first time in my life.
I drove and narrated and drove and told stories and drove and hoped that my ramblings wouldn't spoil the place for my guest.
As we pulled away from the traffic lights round the corner from the flat, back in the rainy city, the roller skate serenaded us with the Beatles' Blackbird.
- San Diego Serenade, Tom Waits
It usually takes something or someone else to give you a new perspective on home and what it means to you. Leaving home to go to University across the hills, I welcomed the concrete and the rain and the freedom of my new found city home; this feeling only ever interrupted in those three years for the split second on trips home as my father's car would round the bend and open up the winding road to the village where I grew up.
A hand printed photograph of those hills, given to me before I went travelling, was forgotten until someone found it at the back of my journal, on the other side of the world, and made me look at it properly, and make me home sick.
But looking at a view or a photograph of a view isn't the same as looking at your home town through someone else's eyes.
We had hired the cheapest vehicle we could, more roller skate than car, but in the end this made the weekend more fun, and probably saved my excess a few times. Planning these things too much raises expectations and invites disappointment, I should have known my hills would speak for themselves. I thought we'd need a soundtrack, but the roller skate seemed to disagree and ate the CD before we'd even filled the tank.
Avoiding motorways and taking to the back roads, Yorkshire didn't let me down; as we crossed the border we were suddenly sharing the road with sheep, the clouds became more dramatic and everything grew. I couldn't imagine seeing this for the first time and was glad I wasn't. I was actually proud of being from Yorkshire for the first time in my life.
I drove and narrated and drove and told stories and drove and hoped that my ramblings wouldn't spoil the place for my guest.
As we pulled away from the traffic lights round the corner from the flat, back in the rainy city, the roller skate serenaded us with the Beatles' Blackbird.
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