I Hate Technology

  My hatred of technology grows every year, and it's just about impossible to escape its grip. 

  Before the days of digital photography there was very little that could go wrong. You might have to change a light bulb in the enlarger, which took a couple of minutes. Your camera could develop (no pun) a light leak which could take 15 minutes to fix. Or you could have a sticky shutter that could occupy up to an hour to remedy. As for the cost of fixing these things yourself, well let's just say a large coffee from Starbucks would cost more.

  Today is a different story. Trying to get a digital camera repaired, and that's assuming that it can be repaired, can cost anywhere from several hundred dollars to a thousand, and the repair time can be measured by months. What photographer can be without his camera for weeks or months at a time. Oh, that's right, you need a backup camera too. The next pain in the ass technology is the professional photo printer. These printers costs anywhere from $1200 to $6000 depending on the size prints you want to make. But the printer is actually the cheapest part of the printing process. Great photo art paper can begin at $75 for a box of only 25 sheets. The larger size papers easily runs into the hundreds of dollars. But the worst of all is the ink cartridges. Most of todays professional photo printers use 8 to 12 cartridge's that cost between $40 and $150 each ! Run a couple of printer cleaning cycles and you can watch money going down the drain. The worst part about the ink cartridges is that they change them with every model, so if your printer breaks, you could be stuck with hundreds of dollars worth of useless ink.

  Next up is the computer. You can spend thousands of dollars on one, only to be notified at some point that the operating system can no longer be upgraded... I'm looking at you Apple. What a scam to get you to buy a new computer. Then the photo software sends you notices that it will not work correctly because it can't update due to the fact that the computers operating system can be updated. Who dreams this shit up ? I'm personally going through this right now.

  There are more days than not that I think that technology has it out for me, because when one piece of it breaks, there seems to be a cascading effect. And the last week has been hell for me that has only got worse today when my Epson P800 decided that it didn't want to print correctly anymore. It's 7 years old and I've made thousands of prints with it, but I have taken meticulous care of it. It gets covered up to keep the dust out, I frequently run the cleaning cycles and all the maintenance utilities but I guess its lifespan is over. Ironically I just received a few ink cartridges and a new maintenance tank. It's an unfixable piece of technology, it's disposable. 

  I believe that a photograph isn't a photograph until it's printed, and it's that printing that keeps my interest going.

 In the past I would hold a small print sale that would cover most of the replacement cost for a piece of photographic equipment, but over the last decade the sales have dwindled down to nothing, or pretty damn close to it. Now I'm worried, I'm worried I won't be able to continue my work, and digital images will just keep building up on an outdated computer. Maybe this is why photography comes to an end for some dedicated photographers.

  In the past I made reference that when I got old I would switch to instant (Fuji Instax Wide) photography. No computer, software or printer needed. But I don't think I'm there yet.