Well, I did it....

No sooner had I posted that I was scared of digital photography than I put my 4x5" camera up for sale on Craigslist, and sold it.  

So, now I'm committed.  

I'm actually going to borrow Lorrie's Canon 7D and start "learning" photography again.  I am seriously tempted to take a long weekend and go up the 395, photographing in the Eastern Sierra, maybe as far up as Bridgeport and Walker, where Lorrie's grandparents used to live.

Part of me is sad to see an "old friend" gone.  That camera became an extension of my art.  I had gotten to know its idiosyncrasies, how to make the adjustments to achieve the images I pre-visualized.  Yet I also felt that my "old friend" held me back.  Film was getting harder to find and was more expensive.  I no longer had the darkroom access that allowed me to do the black & white work that I loved.  We no longer had the software for the scanner, which would have allowed me to scan my transparencies and negatives. Even with that, the scanner wasn't really that good.  
I also have shifted the reason for why I was wishing to do photography with the 4x5" camera.  When I first bought that camera in 1997, my goal was to create large wall images - 24 x 30" or larger.  I knew I could accomplish that with a 4x5" camera.  Digital photography was not really around then, and certainly not of the quality that it is today.  One of the greatest landscape photographers, known for his large format images, now shoots Nikon digital.  And as I've seen Lorrie's photographic work mature, seen the tonal quality of her black & white work, and the saturation of her color work, I find that I am more open to digital capture.  

Plus, I had to do a self evaluation of WHAT my reasons were to do photography now.  What was my goal.  I've seen images shared on websites that are stunning.  With the relative ease of working on post-capture manipulation, and with do-it-yourself websites, sharing and possibly selling my images is a great possibility.  Plus, where I work has large format imaging devices that I could use to create and sell my images.  

So, now is a time of renewed self-discovery, capturing images such as this one below (credit unknown), and finding a voice again.


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