Hey all, Erik here with a quick guest post about a subject that’s raised a lively debate in our studio. Everyone on our crew has long been shooting with Polaroids, rangefinders, micro 4/3 cameras adapted to accept vintage lenses…even processing digital images to look like they came out of an old dusty camera. Surveying the landscape, it’s clear this tide has been rising for a while now and we’re not the only ones attached to this stuff. So the question I present to you is this:
Why is retro or faux-retro photography so popular these days?
Why, when we have such capable and inexpensive cameras at our disposal, are we reverting to old technology and old aesthetics? Is it pure nostalgia? Is it a palette cleanser from the ease and accuracy of said capable and inexpensive cameras? Is it a passing trend? We have opinions–especially Chase does as you might expect–but we’d like to hear from you.
It is exactly because of the ease of access to technology. Anyone now can take a mediocre picture and slap some presets on it and feel like a real artistic photographer. That on top the desire for anything/everything “retro” has created the fad that we are seeing.
Black and white photography will always be “in”…even if they’re just conversions in Lightroom or Photoshop. However, I think the current retro look, which seems especially prevalent with female photographers, is merely a passing trend.
Everyone is doing it, and it’s very unoriginal. More than that, I think retro processing is a crutch mostly used by amateurs who can’t properly expose a photograph. Most bill themselves as “natural light” photographers. They don’t have lighting or skills to make good photos, so they process the heck out of them and call it art.
Personally I like using my Instant camera because its fun to not know exactly what the end result will be when you press the shutter.
Its almost like leaving it all up to the camera to tell you how it sees what you are shooting.
I honestly think it’s an attempt to find originality in a saturated market. With the availability of very capable cameras becoming rampant for all audiences, taking the extra step beyond clicking the shutter release is what allows a photographer to be be different. For some it is attention to detail in composition or large scale pre-production or complex lighting or all of the above. But because vintage effects are more readily available to the masses (inhereted old camera, photoshop “vintage” effects and filters), it is the most commonly adopted extra step. While some photographers are justified in styling a photo to be “retro” or using an old 35mm film camera, others are simply following a trend. And often times, in a less than ideal situation, the client defines the styling of a photograph. Since photographers have to pay bills too, sometimes making it “look like that camera app the iPhone has” is not a negotiation.
I’ll never understand why people buy a D3s/D700/5d Mk2/1d* that has extremely good low-light performance with a small amount of noise, then add a bunch of noise back in. It’s like taking 10 steps forward, then 11 steps back.