Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Whiteout

[Left] Whiteout on Cascade Mountain
Adirondack Park
Essex County
New York

Disposable Waterproof Kodak 400
One Time Use Camera

The latest and greatest isn't necessarily the best. Too many times I have seen photographers touting the megapixels they shoot with. Really, who cares? Megapixels don't necessarily equate to image quality and they definitely don't compensate for creativity. Seems like every gear driven endeavor contains a faction that equates how good you are with what you buy.

My collection of cameras spans two decades. Seems like I can't pass an antique store without scanning the window for an old and exotic camera. As a designer, I am drawn to cameras as functional pieces of art. As a photographer, I love experimenting with a new camera and discovering its unique image qualities. Each camera has its own personality. Although I still shoot a majority of my professional work in digital, I love film. I shoot with disposables, polaroids, toy cameras, old 35's, medium formats, twins lens reflex cameras, and a Quaker Oats pinhole camera I built in art school.

I took the image above with a disposable, waterproof, Kodak 400. My hiking partner and I climbed Cascade in thigh high virgin snow in the dead of winter without snowshoes. The last thing I wanted was the extra weight and worry of my DSLR. Part of the fun of shooting with old, hoopty cameras is overcoming the technical challenges.

Droppin' History: Alberta Korda captured the iconic image of Ernesto Guerava with a camera that in today's dollars would have cost $40. The most reproduced image in the history of photography, Earth Rise, captured on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission to the moon, was taken with a modified point and shoot camera.

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