Photo Exhibition Blog

In the perfect world of digital imagery there is no room left for experiments. But the nostalgia of tinkering with a toy camera and earning kudos in social media is giving film a comeback.

Here is a perfect mix of fashion and marketing. Create a need where there was no need. The motivation is learning how to tame the process of photography and come up with random pieces of art you can show off to your friends.

For those of us seasoned photographers who have worked with chemicals in darkrooms the coming of age of digital photography was a godsend.

But for the next generation who can get fascinated with old vinyl records you can understand how they would get their kicks with Lo-fi photography. And experimenting they do. Let us review some techniques like redscale, cross processing and sprocket holes.

Using expired film with nothing much to lose, why not load the film back to front in the camera so that light will hit the emulsion from the wrong side. You get an orange/reddish hue which is truly psychedelic. Cross processing is the deliberate mismatch of films and chemicals - developing colour negatives as if they were colour slides and vice-versa. As for sprocket holes you would load some 35mm film in a 120 format camera which would expose the entire width of the film. How cute to see your image reach the edge of the film and be superimposed with the frame counts and the emulsion brand.

Add to that the vignetting effect of a no so perfect lens and you can create in the 21st century masterpieces akin to the black & white relics seen at a museum near you.

Art stemming from a different technique is not a new phenomenon. Acrylic paint was a revolution in its day. What is noteworthy about Lo-fi photography is its nostalgic bent for people born in the digital age. So where do you draw the line between art and just random snaps? I guess if the artist deliberately sought a certain effect and honed in a technique to suit a certain subject - that would be called art. Someone successfully expressed something dear to their heart and worth sharing with others.

Anything else short of that is sheer propaganda for vendors pushing their wares to a young market with disposable income (and time to spare...) At the end of the day you still have to digitize those images in order to upload them somewhere. So here comes the rub: If it wasn't for the internet and photo sharing sites Lo-fi photography would not exist. But wait - why not save on processing costs and achieve the same effect with a digital SLR camera fitted with a wacky toy lens? Digital photo retouching now has a few tricks to catch up to.

Michael Deshayes is an artist experimenting with that style.

The jury is out as to whether photographic artists are born or taught. Whether you know how to use a camera is not the issue - it has more to do with the way you use your eyes.

Photographic art sounds a bit like a misnomer. How can some automated process allow room for creativity? The answer lies in the eyes of the beholder of course plus the fact that if you give the same camera to 5 people in front of the same subject you will get 5 different takes on the same topic - each giving away the slant or bias of that individual.

So there we have it. On one hand, with autofocus, light compensating automated cameras, all opportunities for errors have been removed (so we are told...) but on the other hand since I hold the camera and decide the exact timing of when I release the shutter I create a unique picture out of all the other possibilities.

If I use this opportunity for the purpose of being creative - then it becomes art.

Photo-journalism is the realm of reporters hunting sights which are deemed to be news-worthy.

Photo-art is the realm of artists who have trained their eye to capture whatever is uncanny, out of balance, beautiful or intriguing to make it artistic. That screens out all those left over shots that were bad takes.

So what would be the standard to say a picture is artistic? A simple answer would be: whether it conveys the passion of the artist or not.

If I cannot get you excited about what I am passionate about then my images have no artistic value. As a consequence not everything you see in a modern art museum is art - insofar as the taste of a given visitor is concerned.

The final question is: if I am a budding artist and I consider myself an artist and not a tourist, then how do I sharpen my artistic abilities?

It has to do with fanning your passion into flames. How passionate are you to capture that one shot that will make the afternoon well worth it? What subject are you hunting down to death to extract that moment out of time where things seem to hold up in thin air? How committed are you to your cause to expose a sight worth sharing? How many times did you walk around a subject to capture that unusual angle which reveals a new facet to an otherwise mundane topic?

Come on - make my day. Go out with your camera and don't come back unless you have something worthwhile.