 Well, another film channel bites the dust. Is this a film channel? My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. But with bills to pay and a family to feed, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. Come along as I follow my passion trying to create art that shows the essence of nature in a photograph. I'll be sharing my successes and my failures in hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is Ride in the Edge. That was a comment on one of my recent videos. A comment there said that they say I switched to digital. Another film channel bites the dust. I didn't realize I had a film channel. I was kind of actually put off a little bit by that comment. And I started thinking about it. Well, I guess I could see why someone would think I have a film channel. I've been pretty engrossed. I've dived pretty deep into film the last four years. I've never considered myself a film photographer. I've always considered myself a photographer who likes to use film and digital. But I could certainly see why someone would think my channel on YouTube is about film. The last four years I've done a lot of film photography and I've shared a lot of that on this YouTube channel. The truth is I've never stopped shooting digital. I've just concentrated most of my efforts on black and white film. In the past video I've gone into why I'm shooting more digital. I'm not going into that today. I'm not going to rehash that. Basically it's just finances. And I want to become better at using my digital camera for black and white photography. Because that's what I have to work with right now. And the crazy thing is I kind of like what I'm getting with my digital camera. I don't want this to be a negative video. I want to focus on something positive. And I was thinking I have no regrets from the last four years of diving deep into film photography. I mean that's where I started my photography many years ago in film. And I was thinking and looking at my images how I'm working now I don't really work a whole lot different with my digital camera than I do with my film cameras. But my time with film either many years ago or in the last four years has influenced how I do digital photography. And I think for the good. I like the lessons I've learned using film. So I thought I would go over some of that. Another one of those scenes where it doesn't look my mind says that's not quite what you're looking for. It's like it's too hard, too harsh. But really that's kind of the point of the picture of this one, this composition. All these dark contrasty trunks coming up. We've got the atmosphere with the droplets coming down. Everything's backlit, kind of glow of the canopy. It's enough to stop and make me want to make a few frames. I'm not sure if it worked. But instead of just going, that's not a photograph. Because I'm shooting my digital camera I decided well I maybe I should work that a little bit and see if I can make that into something. If I can capture that feeling I feel right now the way that light coming through these trees is making me feel. Like I said, I don't know if it's successful I won't know until I put it on the computer and I may not know for another year. I may come back to the image a year later and go oh, I kind of like that one. Back over here, the light looks pretty good so maybe I'll run back over here real quick and grab a shot. One of the things that I think has influenced my photography from my time using film is I rarely take more than one exposure or let me say I rarely bracket for exposure. When I'm bracketing I'm bracketing for depth of field because even on the back of a digital camera sometimes it's hard to tell if the whole subject is sharp enough or if it's got enough bokeh in the background. My goal isn't to have everything tack sharp all the time from front to back. I don't know where that idea came from but I was reminded that that's not always the best choice and most times it's not the best choice for my photography. I don't mind the sharpness falling off a little bit if I'm using a wide angle lens and I'm really focused more on the foreground. I don't mind having a little bit of softness in the foreground if my subject has moved back here a little bit I want your eye to move past what's in the foreground and often even if I want the whole image sharp I find that it's not that hard to accomplish with one frame. So my time with film has really brought me back around to a more simple approach to photography and often the simple approach is the best approach I think we overcomplicate things sometimes just because you can't have it super sharp from front to back doesn't mean you need to it may not be the best choice or it may just may not be necessary I really don't like combining frames unless I'm doing a panorama or something. This is another one of those scenes that really stands out at me and you have to kind of move around to kind of space the trees out to where it feels balanced I like the way the space between the trees I like that they're dark I like that they're back lit and there's a little bit bigger tree kind of in the middle there that seems to anchor the rest of the trees it's not a whole lot bigger I haven't moved from probably a 100 foot radius once I started shooting in this wooded area I've just keep seeing things that jump out at me that I think might make a decent shot The other thing that I think film has helped me with is to be more confident and trust my intuition more than I was I mean I always had a pretty good trust in my intuition during journalism but in nature photography for some reason I would doubt myself a lot I'm learning to trust that same voice that I had in journalism on my nature photography it's really what makes our photography special different from anybody else's is that little voice inside our head or maybe down in here that kind of grabs you and says that's kind of interesting maybe we should try to make a photo with that I think the more we listen to that the more our personal style comes out the less we look like everybody else this tree behind me I keep looking at thinking there's gotta be a shot here it's quite amazing really I'm gonna take a photograph just because I should pay homage to this beautiful tree I chose to center this composition coming up the pathway of the trail I was struck by this column and then the umbrella shape of the tree limbs today I've got a 55 millimeter manual focus macro lens it's not a macro shot but I think it'll work fine for this the kids are out on recess you can tell I'm not that far out into the wild something else that using film has influenced my digital photography so it helped me define a look it helped me find what I was wanting in black and white in my black and white images it gave me a reference point so when I edit my digital black and white they look a lot like my film photography the same could be said when I was working in the darkroom when I went from film to digital many years ago all the time I spent in the darkroom was time well spent because when I had to go into digital editing when I had to go into using Photoshop and that kind of thing I had a good idea of what I wanted for my pictures I knew what they were supposed to look like and that really went a long ways to advancing my photography in the digital age that wealth of experience in darkroom techniques and using film can be transferred to digital so I consider it an asset to my photography I've had the opportunity to spend so much time using film this one's a bit vague we've got these ferns going this way then we've got a decaying different kind of fern kind of laying this way I'm not sure if that's going to translate into a photograph how they're kind of going the opposite directions get motion this flow this way with the green ones and the rounds are pulling this way I'm reaching quite a bit here if that works out I'll be surprised I can see it but I'm not sure that's going to translate into an image can you see it it could be that the tone is the same whether the brown might look different than the green the tonality could be exactly the same one of them might not be any lighter darker and I think that for this to work it really needs to have a little bit different tonality this is one of those cases where to convert to black and white I might go in to the RGB channels and adjust colors to lighten one of them or the other to get a little more contrast it'll be interesting to see how that converts to black and white if you want to have any real success on a regular basis when using film you need to develop some discipline there's a level of discipline that's needed I think to have consistent results no matter what kind of photography you're doing and I think film really helps ingrain that discipline in your photography in your approach I often hear this saying that people use film because they don't want to do digital photography because they want to trust the technology and the equipment to make their pictures you don't have to do that I'm not sure what where people get this idea that just because you're using a digital camera means you just turn your brain off and let the camera decide no you can do digital photography the same way you do film but there's a discipline in photography that would serve you well and when you're using film you're kind of forced into that discipline now that's not saying you can't find that discipline using digital you just gotta use this, gotta use your head but it is easier to get lazy and be less disciplined when you're using a digital photography approach I will concede that I've fallen into it myself because film has imperfections and spending so much time with it I'm less obsessed with trying to capture the perfect grainless image the aesthetics I'm looking for in a image has changed quite a bit I don't necessarily need a grainless super smooth image anymore in fact I kind of find that unappealing I find that to be plasticky looking so using film has made me appreciate a little texture in fact when I went back shooting my digital camera a lot I started shooting at higher ISOs because I liked what I was seeing in the background in the shadows I liked a little bit texture grain, a little bit of noise now I'm not going to say I'm a real big fan of grain I have a tolerance level for some people they just want tons of it I don't mind it's there and I think it serves a good purpose in my images but I wouldn't say I want grain to be the star of the show so if my digital images have a little texture that's great the first thing you see is the texture the grain, the noise that is not what I'm looking for I've heard over and over through the years that digital doesn't do black and white very well you've got to use film for that and I put that in my head and I I've convinced myself that but what should be said is you have to have an idea of what you want out of your black and white before you go into editing your digital black and white I think it's capable it might be harder to get good black and white images with digital I would give you that it's taken me quite a while to figure out what it is I want to do with my digital files but without that reference from using film I'm not sure I would have come to the point where I am now this is meant to be a positive look at using film although it's starting to sound like I'm saying goodbye to film I would never say never and that's not my intent I am down to just one film camera body right now I've actually shipped one off to see how much I can get for it I bought a camera last year to do a project on one of my zines and I have just weeks sent it off to see if I can get a little money for it because there's a lens, there's a focal length that I'm really missing in my camera kit that I think I would get more use and I find more valuable than having that extra camera body and it doesn't mean I won't at some point come across another medium format camera that I want to try out I want to use but right now as I said before digital photography is my best option so is another film channel bit to dust well today I guess you could say it has but I can't guarantee what the feature will bring we'll just have to tune back in to find out so until next time thanks for coming along for the ride