The Old Is New
They say that everything old eventually becomes new again. It's easy to see just how true this is by taking a look at the world around us. Old styles that were once at the cutting edge of fashion quickly fell out of favor, only to circle back around again with a vengeance. The same is most certainly true of portrait photography. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, film was the only method for capturing those awesome fashion images we saw in magazines. Film, by its very nature, required you to put in a significant amount of time to really get things right. As a result, photographers tended to focus on elements like studio lighting, proper backgrounds, dresses and more - especially when shooting subjects like models.
Digital portrait photography changed all that. You no longer had to carefully preserve a roll of film until you could get it properly processed. With just a few quick clicks of your finger you could instantly see exactly what your camera had captured. As soon as digital photography rose into prominence, all of the old tricks and techniques of photography essentially went right out the window. We used to be excited to print a photograph and from a slide we waited with baited breath to see just how the shot we worked so hard to set up actually came out. With digital photography, we could tell in seconds. There was no waiting around - it was just there.
When I think back to some of the projects that I've worked on as a photographer and the assignments I've had over the years, I think about my time as a late 1980s glamour photographer. I spent a great deal of time working for the Model Center in Costa Mesa shooting up and coming models. We used to spend so much time achieving perfection - or at least, how we defined "perfection" back then. That definition dramatically shifted thanks to digital photography and the new techniques that it brought to the forefront.
But as they say, everything old is new again. You can already see it - Cibachrome was a really popular photographic process in the 1980s because of the really cool and unique look that it gave to portraits. Now, photographers can recreate that look in an instant with a Photoshop plugin. Digital photography was so crisp and clear - immediately after it became prominent, we used to do everything we could to get rid of grain and avoid having that "old fashioned film look." Now, we add filters to our shots to add as much grain as possible back in to give our portraits extra authenticity.
Cross-processing, which was also popular back in the 60's,70's and 80s, is definitely back in style. Even though Polaroid is out of business, we now can't get enough of Polaroid-style images on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. It's interesting - we used to define "contemporary" as "modern." Today's contemporary style is anything but - what we're after isn't modern at all. We're really now looking for that vintage look, especially when it comes to beauty and glamour portraits.
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