When you talk to amateur photographers who have turned away from digital photography and are now shooting (again) the old-fashioned way with film, you very often hear as the main reason: “You just shoot analog much more deliberately because you’re limited to 36 shots.” What hardly anyone says, but many think, is of course: “Analog photographers are simply the better photographers, because they think much more before they press the shutter release button than the mass of digital snappers.” Apart from the fact that you can’t see this in most analog images, conscious photography is not a question of technique or material, but of inner attitude. And you can work on that.

Three exercises for conscious photography

If you really feel like you’re being overwhelmed by the flood of digital images and nothing really worth seeing is emerging, you can try three simple exercises to approach your subjects more consciously (I promise that’s the last time I’ll use that word…).

1: One day, one focal length

Photography is primarily about seeing. But zoom lenses have drastically changed the way we take pictures. A small turn of the zoom ring and you have a different frame. But not a different perspective. If you want to change your view of things, you have to move. A fixed focal length helps immensely. If you don’t have a lens with a fixed focal length, you can simply fix the zoom ring with a piece of tape. It doesn’t matter what focal length you use. The main thing is that you don’t turn the zoom ring for a whole day. You can bet that this exercise will produce some interesting photos.

This exercise is also recommended for analog photographers…

2: One day, one photo

Another exciting but very rigorous exercise: you take a photo every day for four weeks. But only one! Once this one picture is in the can, you don’t touch the camera again for the rest of the day. Okay, maybe you shouldn’t try this on a vacation trip. But for the rest of the year, it’s a great thing to do. Well-known American nature photographer Jim Brandenburg tried this out for 90 days. The result is a  book really worth seeing.

This exercise is also recommended for analog photographers…

3: The 128 MB Memory Card

Ok, if you really think that the memory capacity of today’s SD or CF cards is to blame for the misery, you can try to get along with the limitation to 64 or 128 MB (megabyte, not gigabyte!). Maybe you still have an old card lying around somewhere. If not:

You can still find them here…

Of course, analog photographers don’t need to be told to do this exercise. They seem to actually believe that the limited  storage capacity of the film number of shots of a film has an impact on the creative quality of an image…

Final sermon…

I’ve never seen so many average and really bad photos since digital photography came along!

But I’ve also never seen so many really great photos since digital photography came along!

I would really love to hear your thoughts on this. Please feel free to leave a comment.