My whole career has been bouncing between the worlds of commerce, fine art and academia, with the commercial work paying most of the bills, with teaching keeping me engaged, and my fine art feeding my soul. Always had galleries, exhibitions and enough sales to pay for my habit. But my commercial work specialized in black and white, so I was in the darkroom a lot for clients and my stock agencies. And at the beginning of my stock work, they wanted my fine art work and that look. When trends shifted they kicked me to the curb as I was last week’s soup of the day. Digital pretty much changed everything, in both good and bad ways. Digital is just plain easier, assuming you get past the technological learning curve, which admittedly can be steep. But once you do, it is a piece of cake. The fact of the matter is, when you shoot film you have to know what your are doing. You have to know how your film will react in a given situation, there is no safety net if you screw up. With digital you can lay on the shutter and blast away, and if you screw up, you can fix it in post. It was an interesting transition for me from film to digital. But as much as I liked film, I can’t go back really. Too much work and I find I really like the instant gratification of today’s photo world.
