I wish I could be able to use only film. I really do. I’ve done some landscape photography using film, but I am still on a learning curve (a steep one) and my main workhorse remains a digital body – Canon 5D.
However, aesthetics alone and the lovely look of film are not the only reasons I would love to give up digital for good.
No,the main reason to be honest is that I am pretty convinced that if I did, I would get rid of that question “did you photoshop that image?” Now how cool is for Adobe that their product is now a verb?
For some reason, some people believe that image manipulation is proprietary to digital medium, and that film has a “pure” part – once the shutter is clicked, whatever is captured on film is going to be transferred on paper as print.
While a large number of famous photographers tried to disperse this idea it seems that the question doesn’t get old, so I’ll try to give my views on it as quickly and coherently as I can, especially since I’ve had this question asked a few times since I launched the new site.

The type of photography I do is highly subjective. As a matter of fact, photography in general (apart from specific area such as photojournalism) is highly subjective. Nothing to do with “reality”. You can even call it lying if you want. Just the fact that I am capturing a scene as opposed to another scene, it means that I am giving my personal view on the subject. This part most people agree on.
Cameras do not see as the human eye sees, therefore some kind of compromise needs to happen. Try and photograph a sunset and you’ll understand what I mean – in order to get the colours, most of the foreground will be black (HDR is not the subject of this post).
In order for that to happen, a “visualisation” of the scene must take place so that I know what I am try to say through my photograph: a longer shutter speed to get a continuous flow of water, underexposure to get the colours of the sunrise, etc It seems that these are ok, as long as they happen BEFORE the shutter is clicked. So as long as all the settings happen inside the camera, there is no problem.
The fact of the matter is that when the shutter is pressed, the digital sensor, or film, captures data according to the ideas of the photographer, in order to best express his personal view on the subject. But it doesn’t stop here, not for digital and most certainly not for film. In the case of film, the developing process that takes place into the lab, does the exact same things as the digital processing – manipulating brightness, contrast, cropping, manipulating grain, increase/decrease colour saturation, etc
Actually, one of the TOP priorities for a photographer when he/she presses the shutter, is to capture as much information as possible, from the shadows up to the highlights. Of course this depends on the subject but largely this is the best practice to ensure enough information is available. Then, during the development process – either digital or film, the “personal” view of the photographer is applied to the image – and this is a different skill, but part of the photographic process nonetheless.
To me, photo post processing is pretty much like mixing in the audio industry. The artist makes the performance, then the audio is transferred into post production and the final product is burned onto a CD. Post production will alter the sound to a certain extent, but there is by no means a replacement for the performance. With all the post processing skills and effort, without a good composition, good light, good subject, one can never create a good photograph.
That being said, the type of post processing I do 99% of time is:
- cropping
- adjust brightness
- contrast adjustments

Uf, glad I’ve got this out of the way