Smoking

On Monday I saw something that has stayed with me. Two friends sitting on a bench with a small box, like an index card box but full of photographs and they were looking through them, passing them to each other, discussing them, laughing about them. I couldn't imagine doing that with digital files. Maybe we'll one day do it when tablets are commonplace.

I've been printing photos, my own and other people's and wondering why I want them printed, why I'm not content to just look at them on a screen. And because printing costs something and there's a limited number of frames and places to hang them you select your own from the ones you've kept. Maybe that's it - the refining and selection but why print them? I could do the same with my Blipfolio - it's limited and forces you to choose.

The print swapping is a little more intense because while you can always chuck your own away and choose something else, when you choose from someone else's photos you have to choose just one.

In many ways you can consider printing and framing the true test of a photograph - would I want it on my wall? Do I want to look at it every day? Will it still cause me to smile in week or a month or a year? Of course you won't really know until it's up there. Until you've had a spell of looking it at every day.

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If you go large you'll see that nothing's sharp - shaky camera. That's what I get for having 1/25s on 100mm lens. I actually have a sharper photo with a different smoker posing for the shot - hanging her hand out from behind a pillar. Maybe it's that I know it's staged or maybe I just like the idea of someone sitting in the rain having their fag among a row of containers of used cooking oil.