Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "C J 
Morgan" <cjmorgan@r...> wrote:

> Then perhaps you might be missing out on one of the good 
>advantages of  working with a medium where we can erase our  
> images rather than just having them be costly discards.

Oh, dear...I think I'm about to throw another spaniel in the works.

This is the *other* aspect of digital which sort of makes my teeth 
itch: the idea, frequently encouraged, of "instant editing" where 
one can decide in the moment whether an image is worth 
keeping or not. Early PJs shooting spot news with digital 
frequently ran out of storage space well before running out of 
things to shoot, so they had the stark choice of wiping some 
images for the sake of further shooting, or just packing it in until 
they could offload and transmit what they had. (Ask an AP or 
Reuters stringer how many cards they have on hand; with their 
day rates, it can't be all that many).

I've been making a lot of enlarged digital contact sheets lately 
(one gigantic advantage of the digital darkroom, if you'll forgive 
the pun), and it ocurred to me that, had I been shooting digital, 
just how many of these images might've been 86'd in haste? 
There have been more than a few "reconsidered" frames that 
didn't get the grease-pencil treatment the first time around, but 
on second consideration became "new" keepers. Some frames, 
of course, will remain turkeys, but in the realm of 35mm, they 
don't take up much space, and sometimes, they serve to stoke 
my memory of events the day I shot that roll. This last thought 
just hit me as I typed this - even a bad shot can have intrinsic 
value!

Time to make some more contacts. :-)

- Barrett