How to promote film use?

[Toffle]

The best way to promote film is to use it, print it, do it well, and show it.

Most intelligent people understand that it's the results that matter, and not the tools. So, impress the hell out of those around you with your film use. Be nice about it too, without promoting film as a sort of superior method, but as an alternative that we like and explain why.

My own wording, when people ask me why I haven't started using digital tools, is that I don't like to edit pictures on a computer, and that I prefer a physical tangible process where my hands are involved. Using film is a choice that can be made for many reasons, but the overwhelming one has to be that we simply like it better. Why else would we do it? I know it isn't because I particularly like smelling selenium or sepia toner...

...or Caffenol. But as the good Doctor said, "I love the smell of fixer in the morning..."

Well put, Thomas.

[zumbido]

The digital and more specifically, the Internet age has either made people stupid or at least prone to saying stupid things. For example, whenever a person asks me why I am using film, they almost always think I have not tried digital yet when in fact, I went digital far before 99% of the world some 18 years ago.

The only thing more sad than seeing Kodak in the position they are in is that photography has truly turned into a junk show in terms of the digital venom. It's so bad that if there comes a time that there is no more film for me to shoot, I will be done with photography and never look back.

We need to change the way we do things as analog shooters, it can no longer just be about us. Otherwise, there will be no us...

People always join "teams" on "sides" of shifts like this. A certain type of analog tribalist is no less guilty. See this thread itself for the usual examples of silly assertions about how all digital images are going to evaporate in a few decades and only film (which, for the record, is a lot more sensitive to every common environmental factor than solid-state digital storage media, and a lot more difficult to effectively back-up) is an "archival" media. That sort of raving doesn't help with either the mainstream audience or the rational segment of film lovers.

[Aristophanes]

People always join "teams" on "sides" of shifts like this. A certain type of analog tribalist is no less guilty. See this thread itself for the usual examples of silly assertions about how all digital images are going to evaporate in a few decades and only film (which, for the record, is a lot more sensitive to every common environmental factor than solid-state digital storage media, and a lot more difficult to effectively back-up) is an "archival" media. That sort of raving doesn't help with either the mainstream audience or the rational segment of film lovers.

+1

Coming out with "fim is superior to digifail" makes all film users out to be reactionary Luddite cranks.

Saying that all photography is good, but "yoo may want to try this hand-crafted, old school photography" is a winning sales pitch.

The vast majority of film users acquired through evangelizing will not be in the darkroom anyways because most people haven't the time, money, or space for one. They'll get a mail-order lab to do it, and it will inevitably be scanned. So discrediting digital when scanning will be a key component of promoting film is inherently counter-productive.

[zumbido]

+1

Coming out with "fim is superior to digifail" makes all film users out to be reactionary Luddite cranks.

Saying that all photography is good, but "yoo may want to try this hand-crafted, old school photography" is a winning sales pitch.

Absolutely. This approach is why I can at the drop of a hat get large groups to go out on (film) photo walks with me or join me for a basic intro to processing and printing. I'm still a rank amateur in the darkroom myself (only been at it for a couple years, part-time, in the bathtub), so they're getting exactly what they pay for.

[Toffle]

A few years ago, when I first joined the forum, there was a gentleman whose name escapes me, who proclaimed that as far as he was concerned (and for everyone else, in his opinion) there was no further point to photography because his favourite paper had been discontinued. I don't know what became of him, but I do know that photography as a relevant art does and will continue. Many of us may fall by the wayside if and when materials become difficult to obtain or make for ourselves. The traditional photographer will be considered an artisan, and the finer practitioners, artists. We may be considered curious or quaint. There are already fluff news "features" about photographers who work with traditional materials. Are we becoming the "water-skiing squirrels" of our time?

I am ok with this.
(except for the squirrel part)

[zumbido]

I must have been in the can when they were handing out bushy tails. I always wanted a bushy tail.

[thomas l]

+1

Coming out with "fim is superior to digifail" makes all film users out to be reactionary Luddite cranks.

Saying that all photography is good, but "yoo may want to try this hand-crafted, old school photography" is a winning sales pitch.

You are right!

I think the most important thing is simply to use film, so people see that you are taking pictures on film. Generally the feed back is almost always very good. Then it's good to show your photos - nowadays this is pretty easy as if you are meeting people most digital photographers are showing their pictures on their i-phone - so you just have to show a print on FB paper...;-) Especially young people who grew up with digital photography are very interested in the traditional way. Generally it is important to show people, that film is not dead. I met young photographers who never tried film just because they did not even think about it or thinking that film is not produced anymore......

[CGW]

+1

Coming out with "fim is superior to digifail" makes all film users out to be reactionary Luddite cranks.

Saying that all photography is good, but "yoo may want to try this hand-crafted, old school photography" is a winning sales pitch.

The vast majority of film users acquired through evangelizing will not be in the darkroom anyways because most people haven't the time, money, or space for one. They'll get a mail-order lab to do it, and it will inevitably be scanned. So discrediting digital when scanning will be a key component of promoting film is inherently counter-productive.

Reactionary crank is more like it.(With respect, read some E.J. Hobsbawn for what Luddism was about). The dismissal of all things non-analog wins PKM-25 and others nothing but raised eyebrows and zero cred among their intended audience. I show/give prints to friends, acquaintances, models, and even street shot subjects if I can re-connect with them. They like them for the "look" but also that the print is theirs, a tangible one-off, an "ongoing moment" as Geoff Dyer says. It's not about gear fondling or smugness. It's about the qualitative difference in the images that most people can see immediately. On that, I feel this site is nearing a rethink of its mission and what analog photography means in 2012. Otherwise, the narrowmindedness and parochialism often in evidence could be its undoing.

[Steve Smith]

makes all film users out to be reactionary Luddite cranks.

But some of us are!!


Steve.

[Aristophanes]

A few years ago, when I first joined the forum, there was a gentleman whose name escapes me, who proclaimed that as far as he was concerned (and for everyone else, in his opinion) there was no further point to photography because his favourite paper had been discontinued. I don't know what became of him, but I do know that photography as a relevant art does and will continue. Many of us may fall by the wayside if and when materials become difficult to obtain or make for ourselves. The traditional photographer will be considered an artisan, and the finer practitioners, artists. We may be considered curious or quaint. There are already fluff news "features" about photographers who work with traditional materials. Are we becoming the "water-skiing squirrels" of our time?

I am ok with this.
(except for the squirrel part)

I am NEVER driving again because they no longer make this: