is this group still active?

It's pretty quiet ...that's for sure. I'm not enthused about the level of activity in some of the groups....others are very active.

checking in periodically

I would one day like to be paid or commissioned for my film portraiture, but until that day it will be free. I guess I'm putting in my ten thousand hours.
SE

At least do it for cost price, Snowball. People need to pay to appreciate things properly. Anyway goodonya for actually doing it. I love the look on kids faces when you take their pic and they rush up to the camera to check the back screen....

But yeah, society's tastes are going down the gurgler. people are so content with garbage images now, thanks to the hanheld cinema craze and every tom dick n harry submitting garbage images to the media for tv news and current affairs. Shame to see the standards slipping so far. but us film-heads can stand proud and time will prove us right when people have their digital files wiped out by mega-viruses and failing computers. I feel sorry for anyone who suffers that fate with their images, but negs well cared for are much better, and we are not filling the rubbish dumps with old crap digital bodies and lenses. I know a shop that recently filled a skip bin full of old digital and early AF cameras. Terrible waste.

When I am President people will only be allowed to buy glass and chrome cameras

I'm still out here and checking in from time to time. I agree with the charging issue, at least to recover the (now high) cost of materials, the effort and the risk of not getting quite the right result. It will always be the true art form. Anyone can take 2000 pictures on a digital camera and Photoshop it for an undemanding customer.

I'm now pretty much geared up for 10x8 portraiture (taken a long time to get here) and will be marketing them as legacy portraits, not just portraits. Let the digital snappers do 'just portraits' and i will offer something that can be handed down from generation to generation (archival print = 400 years??) as a genuine family legacy. As a race we don't make anything that lasts anymore - architecture, consumer products, the list goes on, all of it ephemeral and waiting to be replaced by the next great thing, but if you go to photo exhibitions here in London showing works from the 20s/30s/40s, you're rammed in with thousands of others desperate to see something that lasts and that shows who we are and where we came from. Says to me we must make photographs that last for family descendants and/or future exhibition goers. Rant over!!

Will report in from time to time to let you know how i'm getting on. In the meantime, good luck with all your similar endeavours.

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Oh My.
The moderator of this group has not been here since October 2009 . . .
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