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?
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