I’ve been putting a lot of thought lately into what the world is going to look like in the near and distant future. I suppose living through a global pandemic will do that to a person. Will we ever get back to what we considered normal? Is what we are living through right now the new normal? Will things get better? Will they get worse? I don’t know. Quite frankly, I’m just a guy with a few cameras who likes to make photographs.
Speaking of making photographs though… The end of this year has come packaged with a few announcements of price increases in film coming soon. Figures. I mean it is 2020 after all so really nothing is going to go the way we would like it. I’m not going to deny that the cost of film is rapidly getting to the point where I need to start thinking of some creative alternatives. This may mean embracing digital photography a little more than I have in the past. It may mean putting my energy toward cheaper materials like working with paper negatives more often. There are a lot of possibilities here but when a roll of Kodak Tri-X or Ilford HP5 starts pushing the boundaries of $10 a roll I can’t deny I’m forced to rethink things a little bit.
I do know this though. I’ll always be a photographer. How I work just might look a little different in the near future. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing though. Change can be good. New challenges, even cost challenges, can awaken new ideas and new ways of thinking. It seems we are all living in a world of flux right now and I for one don’t want to be a defeatist about it.
So stay tuned everyone.