Dan Dayment - My Reflection on Shooting film and Digital 11/06

Mamiya 7 (Developed and scanned at home)

Fuji Gfx (Medium Format Digital)

Sony A7 (Full frame digital)

My relationship with shooting film and digital is an ever changing one. My photographic practice started on a digital camera and I have most definitely developed a workflow with digital that I could do in my sleep. I primarily shoot all of my digital photographs on a Sony A7, a camera which I have owned for about three years and one that I am super familiar with. It's a full frame mirrorless camera which means it is much lighter and smaller than a traditional DSLR, allowing me to carry it on long hikes with minimal weight which is great. The dynamic range on this camera is amazing and I have produced some of my best work with this camera which is most probably why I am so drawn to shooting on it.

Film has never been at the centre of my practice. It is something that I feel comfortable working with, primary medium format due to the size and quality of the images that you can make. During my last body of work, I began to develop and scan my negatives at home which was a lovely process as I was a part of the whole process that it takes to make a photograph on film. The limitations of this are the number of shots that you can take on a shoot, however this does slow your process down and make you consider every shot that you take. I enjoy this slowness and it was the right tool for the job when I was shooting black and white silence in the landscape.

I knew that I wanted to shoot this body of work in colour and that is when I began shooting on Kodak Portra, developing and scanning at home again. This process was exciting as I had never developed colour film before and found it much easier than I predicted. This process was new to me and I had a lot to learn regarding the scanning software and editing process of the photographs that I was making. I was just about getting the hang of it before I stopped shooting the Pill Box project and I think I will return to shooting it when the time is right.

When I took some time away from this project, I did not stop taking photographs. I had been shooting primarily on film for about 6 months and I was beginning to get tired of the process. I was making work every week, developing every week and scanning every week. This process soon lost its novelty and when I was not always happy with the results I was getting, I became a bit disheartened with my film venture. I can talk about this on reflection as at the time unconsciously, I stopped shooting film and began to shoot on my digital camera again.

I started making work that felt like me again, immersing myself in the landscape and making work on my little digital camera. I brought a 85mm lens (primarily for commercial portraits) however I thought I would take it out into the land with me to shoot some landscapes. This minimal setup with one camera and a prime lens makes you work for your photos. Without having the ability to zoom in and out of your frame, you do slow down and consider every composition that you shoot. For me this was liberating and after feeling slightly derailed I began to feel as if I was back on my creative track.

After researching a wide range of photographers and artists, I began to build a clear picture of the kind of work that I wanted to make. I felt heavily inspired by the expedition photographers as well as landscape photographers that show the beauty and omnipotence of the land. After feeling inspired by the Anthropocene project, I also decided that I wanted to develop my moving image skills which lead me into buying a drone to create a cinematic piece with a God eye perspective. Naturally, it became clear that the work that I wanted to make was best suited to digital. This was for two reasons, the more minimal set up (lighter, smaller and can be shot without a tripod) and the fact that I feel like I am at home when working with digital. Throughout this body of work, I feel like I have built an aesthetic that I am partially happy with. This is most probably the first time that I am truly happy with the aesthetic that I have created and I am looking forward to continuing the development of it in the future

I feel like this is the first time when I have not allowed myself to look at other people’s work and gone “I want my work to look like that”. I have merely used my research as artistic and conceptual inspiration which has enabled me to foster my own creative juices and naturally create an aesthetic that I think best suits the work that I am creating. I think that this photographic journey has embraced the Manifesto ethos as I feel like I have began to cement my photographic identity in a conceptual and visual way.