Visual poetry

The visit to the bings was a bit damp, windy and grey. And cold. So perhaps not too fruitful for shooting. However such days are still useful for exploring a new location and picking up the mood of the place and developing ideas for future visits.
I think the bings, and their odd post-industrial landscape could be worth repeated visits, and would yield pictures that are some distance from the traditional landscape.
I noticed that Steven traded down from his digital camera to the plastic Holga, which I thought was an interesting choice.
He described it as a bad weather camera, which I can understand. For those unfamiliar with it, the camera is cheap, has a hopeless lens that distorts a bit and vignettes; also the medium format film rarely lies flat, so parts of the image are sharp, but not all. The exposure is a bit random, and you can double or triple expose, and not always intentionally. It is everything that digital is not, and so has developed something of a cult following.
The results can be very dreamlike, other-worldy and magical; visually poetic.
Digital cameras can be very convenient and accurate, but the popularity of such odd analogue cameras suggest that we lose something with the convenience and control of our digital equipment. There is a craft in the unique interaction of lens, film type, processing chemistry and printing technique. It can produce images that have a physical quality, and even quite mundane subjects can be transformed into something quite beautiful, beyond what they actually show.
Paul Hill in 'Approaching Photography' suggested that photographs have an inherently beautiful quality, and I do think that the rich tonality of print can have aesthetic appeal, almost regardless of the subject. 
That physical quality - the mix of light, lens, focus, movement, time, film, chemistry, paper, is unique to photography. It is related to reality, but isn't the same as reality. The particular mix of equipment and materials is a significant decision to take when you are trying to put together a project or series of pictures, and can have a major impact on the look and style of the end result.
Digital photography, and online galleries, seem to encourage us to produce open-ended projects that are never quite finished or concluded, and have no physical product. To me this seems a bit unsatisfying. I think we have some need to reach a conclusion, and produce something physical to show for it. After all, editing and selecting, and then printing has always been considered an important part of any project.
Apart from anything else, viewing pictures on a screen is just different from a print.


I would suggest, if you view your hundreds of pictures from a shoot or a trip onscreen and somehow feel dissatisfied, that it may be because you haven't finished the job yet. Editing, selecting, printing and presenting to other people is part of the creative process.
I can't entirely explain why. It just is. 


Here are a few visually poetic projects:


Venezuelan photographer's Holga pics: Aaron Sosa http://aaronsosa.photoshelter.com/gallery/HOLGEANDO/G0000U.tbYA2_jqY/P0000QssqlECmVj8


Alina Kisina - City of Home project: Ukraine
http://alinakisina.co.uk/section/6673.html


Peter Ainsworth's Concrete Island:
http://www.lensculture.com/ainsworth-2.html?thisPic=100


David William's, Ecstasies:
http://www.davidwilliamsphotographer.com/show.php?caseA=1&caseB=95