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Digital Revolution
The history of photography has been a history of change. The changes that have occurred in the past have tended to make photography accessible to more and more people. When landscape photography meant hauling around a wagon with a portable darkroom so that the photographer could cover glass plates with a light-sensitive coating which then needed to be exposed and developed before it dried, there weren't many landscape photographers. When indoor photography meant either minutes-long exposures or using dangerous and smoky flash powder, there weren't many indoor portrait photographers, either. The advent of roll film and box cameras opened up the use of photography to the masses. Flashbulbs and, later, self-contained electronic flash, made it possible for almost anyone to get photos of their child's birthday party.

Today, we're seeing another revolution in photography, one that has made, is making, and will continue to make photography more easily usable by more and more people-digital photography. Today, digital cameras come in cell phones and on keychains, meaning that people can take photos in places and of things that would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago.

Previous photographic revolutions not only extended photography to new groups of people, but also affected the way that "professional" photographers worked by giving them new tools and offering them new possibilities. Digital is no exception. And just as some resisted previous changes, many now resist digital. Some love it, some hate it, but nobody is neutral about it.

Digital photography has made it possible for me to gain control over my images and publicize my images in ways I could not do before. Controlling my images means that I should be able to impose my own artistic vision on the entire photographic process, from initial image exposure to the final print production. In the past, I could do this by having my own darkroom in which I would develop the film, expose the print, develop the print, and finally mount, mat, and frame it. When I had the room for a darkroom, this worked as long as I stuck to black and white. But color darkroom work is significantly more complex than black and white (and correspondingly more expensive) and I was never able to afford it. Furthermore, it has been years since I had room for a darkroom. So, until digital photography became accessible to mainstream photographers, I had to be content with controlling the exposure and letting various labs control the resulting image. Now, with digital as part of my workflow, I can maintain control from start to finish.

There are some images for which I use an "all-digital" workflow: I take portraits with a Nikon digital camera. This allows me to drop out the green screen I use as a backdrop and substitute any of hundreds of digital backgrounds. I also use my digital camera the same way millions of other people do, to take photos of family gatherings and celebrations and to share them with others.

However, my main workflow is a hybrid analog-digital process. I shoot black and white and color transparency film in 35mm, medium format (6x7 and 6x9), and large format (4x5). For black and white, I primarily use Tri-X and Maco IR820 film. (I really like the look of infrared film and often use it for subjects that are not traditional infrared subjects.) For color, I primarily use Velvia and Provia. I develop the film myself (you don't need a darkroom to develop film, just a changing bag and a film tank will do-I use a dark closet and a Jobo processor). I scan the negatives and transparencies to convert them into digital form. I use a Polaroid SprintScan 4000 scanner to scan 35mm at 4000 ppi. I use a Polaroid 45i scanner to scan medium and large format at 2000 ppi. Then I use Adobe Photoshop to retouch and prepare the images for printing and publishing on my website (www.smcqueen.com). Very few of my images get any significant digital transformations; I tend to stick to modifications that could have been done in the traditional darkroom-dust spotting, dodging, burning, contrast adjustment, etc. However, I have recently acquired Corel Painter and I am beginning to experiment with creating "digital art" starting with a photographic image.

I print on an Epson 2200 inkjet printer. This printer uses the Ultrachrome pigment inks, which are great for color, but which have problems printing neutral black and white images. However, I recently found a freely-available program ("Quadtone RIP") that runs on Linux and drives the 2200 to print black and white images that are almost completely free of unwanted color casts. Currently my main limitation with the 2200 is size-it can only handle paper up to 13x19 inches-so I am considering the purchase of an Epson 7600, which handles roll paper up to 24 inches in width.