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Pixelated memories

Photo: sampath kumar g.p.

FADING OUT Film-based photography quietly but steadily bows out in the days of digital

A toothy baby grin in black-and-white, friends ganged up at the 13th birthday bash, graduation, the glowing newly-wedded couple, grandma’s 80th birthday — just some of the photographs you perhaps treasure, tucked away in some musty album in a corner of the house. But it is there, isn’t it? Waiting always, to be whipped out in moments of nostalgia or on a boring rainy day when you can’t go anywhere else but the past.

But what do most of us generally end up doing today? Click on the mobile camera or the digital thingummy, download it to the laptop (or the office system), make a few prints, burn it on a CD and hope it won’t get scratched over time? Or upload on Facebook, post a link to friends for an online album. Does it give the same feeling as touching that grainy picture yellowing with age and neglect?

As much as we need to move on and keep up with the technology of the times, there is something perhaps amiss in our approach to photographs and photography. Something about the obscurity of the roll that calls for a bit of mourning. Recently Eastman Kodak Co. announced that it will discontinue manufacturing its iconic Kodachrome colour film this year due to tumbling sales, as photographers embrace newer digital imaging technology. It had been around since 1935 — the first commercially successful colour film brand. If more film producing companies decide to stop manufacture, film rolls may be seen only in museums.

While there are some who have made the smooth and successful transition from film to digital, others are still holding on, screaming and kicking up a fuss to let go. Take K. Venkatesh for instance. A freelance news photographer in the thick of the profession for 24 years, this 43-year-old has lost many assignments because he has refused to go digital. “As a photographer I believe there should be some thrill till a photo is developed (from the negative). You need to keep wondering ‘Has it shaken? Is it in focus? Has the person closed his eye?’ And you need to learn from your mistake.” What Venkatesh is talking about is dying of the art of photography. He hates the fact that in digital photography, you instantly see the result of what you have shot, even as you shoot, and make corrections or re-shoot. (Many photographers talk of the joys of this “surprise” element in using the film-roll format, and the sweet results of old-fashioned hard work.) He uses a Minolta on auto-focus and manual modes, and calculates that a roll of Fuji film comes at Rs. 48 and developing at about Rs. 15. He swears that negatives don’t spoil very easily and film photography gives a picture better clarity and detail. “I want to push it till it becomes a question of survival,” he offers.

Then there is the average person. Us. We adapt to the more convenient of technologies that allows us access and control over things previously unthinkable. Usha. K, mother of a three-year-old, regrets not having taken too many photographs of her daughter’s early days on a film camera. “From the day she was born, we kept taking digital pictures and got them burnt on CDs. Some of them we just lost, others went blank over time. Now I feel bad that I can’t show her too many pictures of her when she grows up…in fact, I’m already beginning to forget what she looked like when she was a baby.” The only prints from film she has, are a set taken when her child was six months old, at the G.K. Vale Studio.

C.R. Srinivas Prasad, who’s been doing wedding photography for over 21 years now, went digital eight years ago. He believes it is a wonderful technology in a time when “everybody is conscious about how they look”. He also does portfolios, industrial and commercial photography and says everyone now demands the digital format. “No one asks for the photo negative. Young couples want to e-mail wedding pictures to friends, so I give them a DVD. But they also want to keep an album of prints. And when compared to film-photography, the cost for the client is only about 10 to 15 per cent more than before.”

He observes how many photo processing labs are rare to come by, very few use the developing machines they still have. Labs that processed up to 1,000 rolls of photo-film everyday for processing now may get about 10, be observes.

While advocates of digital talk of the miracles of being to modify the picture to get the best, it is perhaps this same quality that makes it unacceptable, according to law — anything that involves litigation should be on a film negative!

G.K. Vale Studio on M.G. Road gets about five to 10 rolls for processing everyday now, compared to about just four years ago, when at least 250 rolls on an average would land at their doorstep to be printed, say representatives.

While the argument for and against film and digital modes of photography will continue, each having its advantages and disadvantages, the slow but sure letting go of the photo film has its share of silent bystanders, living off a peephole of memoirs, and grieving the passing over of another dear friend.

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