Grand Forks City Hall

I've been spending some time going back and adding labels to all my previous posts (mostly about the photos, not so much about my words). As I've been doing this, I've had the opportunity to look at some of the night photographs that I had posted early on in this blog's life. Photos that come from a time before I got my own film scanner, and so had to rely on store scans (some of these I've already re-scanned, and others have similarity with new work that I've scanned myself).

I find that having my own scanner has really opened up many new possibilities in the way that I interpret an image. With picture CDs, the purpose of the jpeg is to allow U to get an exact duplicate of the store print, meaning that the file has the same (largely) automated "corrections" to contrast and colour as the print that U took home. With the scanner, I start with the raw and unedited data that exists within the piece of film, and I get to choose what "corrections" will be made, how, and in what order. Often enough, I find that it's just easier to get the effect that I want when working with the raw data, because, often enough, those automated store processes either edit out, or over emphasise, various subtleties that I really like working with (or at least having the option of working with). And all of this without even talking about the difference in file size, 20 million picture pixels compared with little more than 1.5 million.

The photo is actually the first shot that I ever took of Grand Forks City Hall, on 11 July of 2006. Ironically, I probably could have gotten the same end result off of picture CD jpeg (at least as far as this blog is concerned, printing is whole 'nother story).