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07-02-2016, 12:40 PM   #1
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"END OF AN ERA" - Famous Photographer Trashes 25 Years Of Old Film Images!

John Shaw is a famous photographer. He's written some popular photography books, leads photo safaris, and conducts photography workshops (I attended one a few years ago).

Here's a link to a blog article he wrote entitled "End Of An Era". If you're an older photographer (like me) with lots of film negatives and slides carefully achieved away, then you will likely relate to what John says...

The amazing Pixel Shift images produced by my K1 will only further absolete my film images. K1's Pixel Shift makes me want to go back and re-shoot many of the landscape shots I took back in the film days.

07-02-2016, 01:21 PM   #2
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Some day i will start digitizing all of my old negatives and slides hiding in a box i move with me to every new house.
07-02-2016, 01:51 PM   #3
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The way I read it, he did an audit of his archives. Fair enough. That is different than scanning and shredding. The slides and negatives are the original captures and should be treated as such. Scans are copies and those too have their purpose.

For most of us, even winnowing the archives should be approached with caution. In with my serious work are a lot of images that document my history, both personal and with the camera. Ansel Adams is reputed to have destroyed large numbers of his early negatives in a single act as "inferior". This has been a source of frustration for art historians and those who study his work. From what was left, it appears that Adams sprung, fully formed, as some sort of photographic deity with full perfection of vision and technique when in reality, there were many years of learning and growth.


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07-02-2016, 02:16 PM   #4
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My film 'End of an Era' was in 2007. It was at that point that I no longer had external requirements to shoot film and
the year I bought my first DSLR, (K10D). Haven't touched another roll since then, though my wife and I recently acquired
a cache of 20-30 year old film and I >may< get around to shooting and developing a roll of T-Max again, someday.

Nonetheless, I don't think that has devalued the images I captured on film. Sure, there are bad images not worth
keeping; out of focus, under exposed duplicates of subjects better captured, or even multiples of the same, time
irrelevant subject, (documentation work), which doesn't require the need of multiples. But there are plenty of images
that I captured on film that are still a relevant record of my experiences and the time I lived in them.

Nor do I think pining for today's technology to re-shoot the past is of any value. I can no more go back to 1983 with
a K-3 than I can return to 9th grade to ask out Coleen or return to purchase, (or not purchase) a particular investment
stock. I >might< regret having missed photographing an event that I could have captured, but that capture would still
have been made with the technology of the time, including the limits of my resources. To that end, even the Instamatic
images I snapped as a 9yrs old still have value to me.

Want a regret? About 10 years ago, my mother threw away every negative she possessed, keeping only a singular
print of each image, with a small percentage of duplicates. Every single negative of my youth and of my mother's
life gone and now unreproducible save for a scan of drug store developed photograph. I was horrified when she
told me, though I knew there was no retrieving the negatives so didn't let on how incredibly gutted I was at the news.
She obviously didn't see the value in them and thought it was enough that she kept the prints.

07-02-2016, 05:51 PM   #5
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QuoteOriginally posted by tvdtvdtvd Quote
Want a regret? About 10 years ago, my mother threw away every negative she possessed, keeping only a singular
print of each image, with a small percentage of duplicates. Every single negative of my youth and of my mother's
life gone and now unreproducible save for a scan of drug store developed photograph. I was horrified when she
told me, though I knew there was no retrieving the negatives so didn't let on how incredibly gutted I was at the news.
She obviously didn't see the value in them and thought it was enough that she kept the prints.
My mother did the same. Family members have since asked my dad for copies and the best we can do is offer flatbed scans of the dog-earred drugstore prints.


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07-02-2016, 06:07 PM - 1 Like   #6
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When I was young my parents hardly ever took pictures so the only ones of me as a kid were ones relatives took and that was only every few years.

I have a large number of negatives and slides from my over 40 years of shooting film, and it keeps getting bigger as shot over two rolls this afternoon. If I had only shot colour film prior to digital I most likely would have stooped shooting film altogether but I still love the process of shooting film and working in the darkroom.

I have read many articles and a couple of books by John Shaw, he never failed to enlighten me on a subject.
07-02-2016, 07:30 PM - 1 Like   #7
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Luckily I have only about eight 3-ring binders of negs/slides. Some years back I quickly scanned them for reference only. I doubt I'd keep more than a couple hundred if it got down to actually having to weed them out.

07-02-2016, 09:24 PM   #8
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I don't know him nor give John Shaw any credit given his statement, "If this is what you kept, how bad were the images you threw away."


QuoteOriginally posted by Fenwoodian Quote
The amazing Pixel Shift images produced by my K1 will only further absolete my film images.K1's Pixel Shift makes me want to go back and re-shoot many of the landscape shots I took back in the film days.
I don't know you and obviously we don't share the same perspective when it comes to photography. As such, let me just tell you that the images I've captured - that I have a connection with, are not technology bound and are time sensitive. For instance I have regretted not using the best film type - or some other such nonsense, for some images that I know I could have gotten better results from. But due to the nature of the images - particularly the contents, the images cannot be remade unless there is a time machine.

So if your images can be revisited - like you said now that you have the latest and greatest, well then go do it.

Last edited by LesDMess; 07-02-2016 at 10:03 PM.
07-02-2016, 10:53 PM - 1 Like   #9
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Seems like a knee jerk reaction throwing out any of your old images, I could never do that. He sounds like someone who in 20 years will delete many of his current images from 2016 or earlier, as they were taken with a crappy DSLR from the period and don't measure up to whatever is the current fad in photography in 2036.

Phil.
07-03-2016, 03:04 AM   #10
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It is certainly reasonable to go back through and figure out what images are worth keeping and which ones are not. I would say that some people equate resolution and sharpness to quality and with 35mm color film, you may not have either of those in large amounts -- that is why so many photographers used medium and large format films back in the day. To me, however, there is a lot more to an image than those things and images with great light and composition or that capture a special moment -- even if grainy and not as sharp as we are used to in the digital age -- are still of value and should be kept.

Shooting digital makes it a lot easier to keep a bunch of crap on random hard drives that no one will ever care about when I am gone. Photos of my kids and family are a different story...
07-03-2016, 05:09 AM - 2 Likes   #11
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I am a photographic archivist and we call this appraisal: assessing what is worth keeping and what is not. Not everything is worth keeping. As people go through this process, I hope they consider donating their unwanted negatives, prints, and/or negatives if they document interesting aspects of everyday life or other subjects worth preserving. When in doubt, contact a professional archivist at an institution near you. Even if that institution doesn't collect what you have, she or he may know of another place that does.
07-03-2016, 06:04 AM   #12
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QuoteOriginally posted by LesDMess Quote
"If this is what you kept, how bad were the images you threw away."

Not all the photos we take are worth keeping for their artistic merit.
But every one is a personal memory, and should be saved just in case.

As someone who recently lost a lifetime of photos and negatives,
both mine and my family's, I suggest you hang onto everything.

Even for prolific shooters they don't take up that much room.
You won't regret keeping them; once lost they're gone forever.

Chris
07-03-2016, 07:43 AM   #13
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I don't think I could do it.

I have kept many shots over the years that might not have much artistic merit, but they may contain the only image I have of a certain person, object or event. On more than one occasion I've looked through my "reject files" and found a photo of a long lost friend, or was able to reconstruct a damaged or missing object by looking through old shots. I only shoot film occasionally now (which I still enjoy), as digital is much more convenient, but as I tell my wife, I've kept these things all of these years (film files, darkroom equipment, slide projectors, light table, WAY too much photographic equipment) we obviously don't need the space they are talking up, so why get rid of them now. Besides, everyone is always saying we need to leave something for the next generation, so here you go.
07-03-2016, 07:50 AM   #14
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Shaw, as a diligently working pro for many decades, produced thousands of throw-away exposures per year, perhaps thousands even on some large individual photo projects -- "throw-away" in that they were not publishable for the intended project. My photographic production has been on a meager scale by comparison, and a near miss exposure I took 50 years ago or even a bad exposure of something important to me is of value, not to mention the dslr I have to compare my film images to is a K110D. In short, Shaw's perspective is more or less irrelevant to my own situation, though it is interesting on an intellectual level, as divorced from my reality as it is. I am interested in the experiences and ideas of great photographers.

On the subject of old family negatives being thrown away, I still have many of those negatives. However, I do not have negatives of many of the oldest family pictures. To some extent that is not a great worry because those early prints (1920s-30s) are NOT enlargements -- they are very good contact prints from 120 film! I have made 6 megapixel scans of many of them that are excellent. The use of enlarging to make the family snapshots the local drugstore procured via a Kodak lab in the region is, so far as I know, a post-WWII development. A good contact print from 120, 620, or any film 127 or larger, is a significant archival resource!

Last edited by goatsNdonkey; 07-03-2016 at 07:58 AM.
07-04-2016, 04:28 AM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by goatsNdonkey Quote
A good contact print from 120, 620, or any film 127 or larger, is a significant archival resource!
True, but the negative is still the primary resource material and the negative will have more tonal range than a print. As an archivist, I always try to obtain negatives and prints.
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