The new digital universe is one of the main the reasons that I can move to the South of France in the first place. Eight years ago when we had thought of moving but it seemed then very, very far away.
My stock photo agencies, for instance, were all in the U.S. and still asking for color slides and transparencies. Whenever I visited France I had had trouble getting film processed and I was also worried about the expense of shipping large packages of slides halfway across the planet. It would put a crimp in my stock shooting to say the least.
Back then the magazines I worked with were still asking for film. A few were getting comfortable with digital images only IF I shot them with my 2MP Nikon. Today, of course, magazines only want stuff uploaded to their websites making it very easy. Now I can write and shoot and upload stories at the click of a mouse.
Another factor working against moving to France back at the turn of the 21st century was gear. I do a lot of studio photography and that means big electronic studio flashes that all use 110-125 VAC 60 Hz power. Europe is all 220 VAC at 50Hz making my lights incompatible. You needed studio flashes because film was very color sensitive and needed precise, color accurate strobes to get true color. Remember kids this was the time long ago, before Photoshop color adjustment. Film was relatively slow with speeds of ISO 400 or slower. That called for a lot of light.
Well between Photoshop and high ISO capable camera you can do a lot more with a lot less light. So I took my big old strobes to a local photo shop and sold them. When I get to Europe I’ll invest in some of the new generation of cool fluorescent and LED lights for studio setting.
Once we decided to move I spent weeks going through thousands of 35mm slides and medium format transparencies. It is both exhilarating and heart breaking. The images stirred up memories of the kings and queens, presidents and artists, the rich people and the poor I have photographed over the years. People like Ronald Reagen, Jimmy Carter, Queen Elizabeth II, The King of Sweden, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Spinal Tap, Annie Lennox, Deng Xio-Ping, Clint Eastwood, Luiciano Pavoratti and others.
But I have had to edit my pictures ruthlessly because they are physically too much to ship. So I sat in the middle of a dozen plastic file boxes editing my pictures and my past.When I found something I really wanted to hold on to, I scanned it and saved it as a digital file. In the end I loaded all my digital images into three 16 GB flash drives along with my favorite CDs and copies of articles and books I’ve written.
Nearly five thousand images and whole copies of two books are stored in devices the size of a cigarette lighter.
Holding those three tiny flash drives in my hand I realized the truth of what Arthur C. Clarke, author of “2001”, had written,
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. “
Being able to hold one's life’s work in a couple of tiny flash drives is truly magic.
Actually scary magic....
Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer
This is SOOOO inspiring. Whowee Zowee. Em
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