Back to School

I know I have already broken my resolution to blog everyday, but I did say that it was just something I was aiming for, not a steadfast goal. I knew going into this that I would have several days right off the bat that I wouldn't even be near a computer, let alone have internet access and time to blog. I was camping in southern New York State's Catskill Park for several days last week, and then I came home to clean and prepare for party that we had on Saturday, and then all day Sunday I spent back-to-school shopping.

I can't believe that in just two short days I will be back at school - William Paterson University to be exact - pursuing this Bachelors of Fine Arts degree that has been on hold for the past 6 years. I went there for two years back in 2002 through 2004, and then I moved out of state. Now that I've been back in Jersey for a year, it's time to pick up where I left off, so to speak, and finish my BFA.

A lot has changed since I last attended; the campus is physically different with several new buildings have been (and still in the process of being) built, they offer online classes now when before hardly any professors even used email, but the most notable change of all is within the Art Department itself, especially with the advances to digital photography and the almost complete death of film photography.

It seems to me that they are pushing more and more students into the digital realm with graphic design, web design, and animation and all, and abandoning the more traditional arts of drawing, painting, and sculpting. They still offer these courses, but it seems as though the emphasis has shifted. Film Photography isn't even touched on, save for a special advanced photo course, and digital photography has become the norm.

I will certainly miss spending endless hours holed up in the dark room on campus, dipping my fingers in all sorts of toxic chemicals, breathing in what probably causes cancer if exposed to it for long enough. No, really, I will miss it a lot. I'll miss the silent solitude you could find in the dark room, lit only by a dim red light that hides pretty much everything in the room. I'll miss that chemist-in-a-lab type of feel I got working there. I'll miss the surprise that was taking a photo, developing negatives, printing up prints, and only getting to see your final results after all the work has been done - the overall mystery of it and the science I didn't fully grasp are old friends I'll look back to fondly. There is a permanence and a physicality to traditional film that digital will never have.

But, I know that digital photography will be way easier to work with in school, and it will be much cheaper in the long run, and that is of course important on a student's budget. And, I know that film photography is seriously non-eco-friendly and that digital is much gentler on the environment. And I absolutely love technology and computers and new gadgets, and I too love digital cameras and digital photography.

However, I think that it has become too accessible: give any idiot a cell phone with a camera and they think that they are a "photographer". Being able to push a button doesn't inherently give you the talent to take a real photograph. Just because you can instantly post it to all of your friends and family on facebook, or tweet it out to your legions of followers on twitter, doesn't make you the next Ansel Adams.

Kids will grow up now without knowing what film photography even is. They won't know a time before "photoshop" was a verb, let alone a fancy photo editing program, or how hard it really is to edit film photography. After all, how many people even know what "dodge" and "burn" in Photoshop are really about? Even Polaroids have died (and since been resurrected), but One-Hour Photo shops aren't just disappearing from our urban landscapes, they are disappearing from our collective memories. Photography used to be about carefully and methodically planning out how to capture images and important moments in time - now it's about quickly capturing anything and everything on a cell phone or a point-and-shoot, living life vicariously through our LCD "viewfinder" screens. 

Change is good. I sure didn't mourn the switch from VHS to DVD, and the recent shift to streaming media. I don't shed tears for all those CDs now playing coasters more than music. I love my Netflix streaming on my XBox 360, and I love my iPod Touch. But I will sorely miss my film canisters and piles of film prints, and I will keep missing it, even as I snap away pictures of random un-photogenic and totally boring life on my digital camera.