The imperfection of memories

I often talk about painting with light because in essence that’s what we’re trying to do with our cameras. We have a photosensitive media, be that a CMOS or CCD sensor or a sheet of silver halide emulsion and we use available light to freeze a scene that we compose through a lens - what results is the capture of a memory, we record how we see something - which may reveal something about us and how we felt in the moment that we pressed the shutter, it may also convey some feeling to a viewer of the image at a later date. Photography is by its very nature a nostalgic exercise. The choices we make as to how we post-process images in the case of digital photographers using mirrorless and DSLR cameras say as much about the feeling we wish to convey as the choices of a film photographer selecting a film stock or deliberately choosing to use a grainy and out of date black and white film stock.