Plagiarism ain't what it used to be

I was going through my old negative files the other day and I stumbled across some of my first medium format negatives. After leaving college I was advised by an old friend of mine, Stephen Mayes to buy a medium format camera, as this would suit the kind of work I was doing at the time (portrait series). I'd never used medium format before but I was a big fan of the hyper-sharp low depth of field portraits that were in so many magazines at the time, and I knew if I wanted the same grainless look medium format was the only way to go.

So I set about trying to get together a system and a working metod that would get me what I want. These days it's easy to dissect someone's technique, you can just go on to flickr, find a picture shot in the style you like and read the EXIF data. There you will find what camera was used, what lens was used and at what settings. Likely the photographer has some actions or presets to sell you so you can match the colours or a workshop you can sign up to and learn all you need to know.

Things were different in 1996. There was no flickr, no exif data, and a higher value placed on trade secrets rather than just monetising your technique so that Uncle Bob can take pictures just as good as you (sort of). Instead I had to pick a medium format camera, which basically boiled down to what I could afford whilst avoiding the 6x4.5 format which was, I was reliably informed at the time the sole province of wedding photographers, and rich amateurs who like to shoot glamour at the weekends. I know this wasn't true now but there wasn't much internet back them so your sources were rather more unreliable.

Anyhow I plumped for a Pentax 6x7 because it worked just like a big SLR, although it had several shortcomings I'd have to work around as I'd discover in due course, as indeed did all the medium format cameras of the time.

Next film choice, looking through magazines I'd decided that the work I liked best seemed to be shot on slower film so I plumped for FP4 as my slower choice with Tri-X as my faster film. Of course there was no way I could know definitively what others shot, and on top of that there was even less chance I could find out how those negatives were developed, or how or on what they were printed on to.

The upshot of this is that I couldn't just ape someone else as you can today. There was much more difference between camera bodies, film (or sensors if you will), and processing. Each decision that I made had to come to through a process of trial and error and a furthering of my own photographic knowledge. Each decision also took me further from actually copying others work and more towards making choices that would ultimately help define my own style.

So next time you are tempted to buy some actions or textures stop and think, is this advancing my photographic education or simply giving me a quick fix for average pictures?