David Vestal on Printing

A digital camera makes us notoriously profligate with exposures.

One of the exercises I suggest to my younger photographic friends is to go a week without looking at their LCDs. Learning to shoot digital like film - waiting to see to outcomes when the images are "developed" - creates a shooting discipline that really improves digital shooters' output. Since they cannot see the results in real time, exposure and composition have to be more planned. (Excepting the case where the shooter uses the camera in 'spray and pray" mode - but that's not photography.)
 
Good thinking.
There’s similar advice to use one prime lens too. All good training.
I was once on a workshop, in the days of film, with a well-known photographer, who taped up our viewfinders for a day - an even stricter application of your principle.
There are situations where spray and pray is a useful technique. I have a friend who is very politically aware and records public demonstrations. We seem to have several every day in London.
The speakers’ faces change very rapidly so it’s impossible to predict what expression he’s captured and there’s no time for chImping.
He isn’t using either LF or film, but I know that he is experienced in both.
You might not think this is photography, although of course it is. I use the convention of applying a capital letter when I intend something more than simply a particular system of recording the world.
Thus: photography or Photography and of course art and Art. In extremis, I might even resort to ART.
 
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