musings on emulation (2023) (Patreon)

(Promise after this I'll switch back to the archives for a bit, and not just post self-portraits, but I had some things to say about this specifically that have been on my mind!) 

This self-portrait was taken four days ago, in Custer, ID. It was, of course, taken on a Nikon D750 with a Sigma 50mm f1.4 art prime lens mounted on an aluminum Manfrotto tripod with a geared head, my normal loadout and a very typically 2010s-era set of gear. The film/plate emulation comes from the Nik Collection 2 series of Lightroom plug-ins, primarily the Silver Efex 2 plug-in. (I got it years ago as a free download in the brief window Google owned the company, and I to this day have yet to find more powerful b/w editing and film emulation. It's just that good, and despite a very opaque UI for some of its features, it's fun to use.) 

Of course, this b/w stylization is unusual for me. My work is obviously stylized in what I'm hoping to define as my "look"—dark thick blacks, slightly-warmed highlights, more-vivid-than-real skies—but it is never attempting to be something it's not, either. It's always just a stylized digital photo. When I shot The Last Great American Road Trip and wanted more 80s nostalgia, I picked up my film camera and I shot Kodak Colorplus, rather than attempt to fake the film look with a digital camera. I can count on one hand the number of times I've converted a photo to black-and-white and actually used it as the artistic, posted version of the shot. 

Why is this line so hard for me to cross? I think it's multi-fold, but primarily, I worry about the perceived authenticity of my work. I always wanted my work to appear genuine, so that even when it's staged and constructed, it feels like a peek into real life rather than a composed photograph. I worry that to emulate another style, especially film, adds a level of constructed artifice to the picture that demolishes the perceived legitimacy of the scene. Also I worry it's too hobby-lobby kitsch, admittedly. 

Why cross it here? Well, the project I posted a teaser of yesterday (Self-Portraits of My Past Lives) would be made more visually interesting, I believe, if I tried to emulate the style of the photography of the era it represents, so wet-plate for the 1870s, early film for the 1890s (see above), consumer color film for the 1960s, and so on. It's just that if I attempted to undertake this for real—with the actual tech of its era—it would go from "somewhat ambitious project" to "I need a Guggenheim grant and six months of study", which isn't happening.

colorized (but, you know, not really)

The original shot works just fine in color, too, but seeing it in my traditional digital color editing emotionally feels vastly different than the black-and-white version. Both versions are clearly admissions of constructed scenes, just in different ways. So the question I'm raising—and if you have thoughts on it, I'd love to hear them—is whether this imaginary line I've constructed is worth crossing for this special project. I still am not certain.