Sienna Luna

For those that may be curious, they are quite a few images on this blog with film grain. Well, I shot film for many years— late 1980's to present day, although I mostly stopped by the late 2000's. I still have a full darkroom and many film cameras. For the most part, I find using film to be too tedious and limiting unless it's larger format and/or a special developing process. I've scanned many of my film shots— some from negatives and some from prints if they were unique or noteworthy. The negative scans I reworked in Photoshop because I really wanted to see the difference from original prints made from them, and the print scans are as faithful as possible since that was the point of scanning them. So images on this blog that have grain are mostly from those scans of old work, although I typically make them look like my newer work. That makes sense to me since this is a showcase of newer work— and with photography, old work can become new work. The old versions are in print portfolios. I make new prints as well so that I can eventually compare the difference. It is a project in and of itself. Lately, I've been applying Photoshop grain to newer digital work just to see if one seems more interesting than without. Not surprisingly, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. This doesn't seem like a dishonest thing since they are virtually indistinguishable from their film counterparts in web version form, despite the fact that I'm not always noting what is what. Hell, you can hardly notice the grain until you click on the image for a larger version. There is no truth in photography! I've written about that before. If there is no truth in photography, then it can't be dishonest— with the obvious exception of an image being falsely used as documented evidence in a newspaper, book or court case. Not that photography really has had such weight as being inherently truthful since its beginnings. To make a long story short (too late?), these two images are new and digital. Just to let you know ;)