Before we leave the capture phase, we should consider a film art photographic genre that is, arguably, photography at its most right-brain: box camera (or toy camera) photography. Cameras like the Holga and Diana offer limited or nonexistent user control over exposure, and don’t allow focusing. All it takes to make a picture is to… [Read More]

We move on to another historically important art photography capture genre, cameras that are used when maximum quality is desired, and size, weight, convenience, and speed of operation are all much less important. In the film world, this usually means a view camera using sheet film of 4 x 5 or larger. It’s hard to… [Read More]

In the previous post, I compared the experience of capturing images using professional-level 35mm single lens reflexes both with film and digitally. I’d like to move on to other cameras with historically large roles in art photography. Next up is the 35mm rangefinder camera. In the film world, if we restrict ourselves to cameras currently… [Read More]

Over the weekend, I attended a CPA members’ workshop. In one of the plenary sessions, someone said that digital photography and conventional chemical photography were qualitatively different in that the former was a left brain activity, and the latter used the right brain. While I thought it was a novel idea, I was at the… [Read More]