A Quote by Mary Ellen Mark

I'm not against digital photography. It's great for newspapers. And there are photographers doing great work digitally. When they use Photoshop as a darkroom tool, that's fine, too. But at this point of my life, after so many years, I don't really want to change, and I still love film.
In terms of digital photography, I continue to print and use film for the most part. I still shoot with film, 21/4 film specifically, and I love it. I love it because I know what it does, how it really responds to light.
There's no more film. Film is gone. We photograph digitally and electronically. We don't really use film the same way anymore - it's disappearing little by little. Things change. We have to change with them. There's no point in liking or not liking it. It is what it is.
If you look at photographers who say, "I hate digital photography," they all use Photoshop, even if it's to make the sky just a little more blue than it was. Manipulation is very discrete and because it's so discrete nobody cares about it anymore. People accept manipulated photographs, I think.
I want to work with great directors and tell great stories - storytelling is the one great love of my life, and it means so much, and we have the ability to change the world by telling stories, and I want to keep doing that.
I'm a great supporter of transcendental meditation. I've been using it for almost 40 years now - and I think it's a great tool for anyone to have, to be able to utilize as a tool for stress. Stress, of course, comes with almost every business. I think there are enough studies out there that show that TM is something that could benefit anybody. It's a great system to use. Otherwise, why would I've been doing it for all these years, for almost half of my life?
I believe Photoshop is in some way the contemporary darkroom, the creative area that all photographers have available today.
I photographed with film for many years; now that I work in digital, the difference is enormous. The quality is unbelievable: I don't use flash, and with digital I can even work in very bad light. Also, it's a relief not to lose photographs to x-ray machines in airports.
I like to think of Photography 1.0 as the invention of photography. Photography 2.0 is digital technology and the move from film and paper to everything on a chip. Photography 3.0 is the use of the camera, space, and color and to capture an object in the third dimension.
I'm staying with film, and with silver prints, and no Photoshop. That's the way I learned photography: You make your picture in the camera. Now, so much is made in the computer... I'm not anti-digital; I just think, for me, film works better.
I like the film camera better because the film is still one hundred times better than any digital image at the moment. So, there are certain movies that you can't really do digitally.
I want to go wherever there's great work. I'm a huge fan of film primarily. But you can get a great TV show and get attached to it. Making a great film is forever, though, so I always want to be part of film. It's my first love.
Don't get between me and a really good picture in the darkroom, because then I want to go straight to the darkroom and develop it. But once that's done, I'm fine.
You start out with big dreams and I mean, big dreams artistically. You want to work with the greatest living directors, make a great movie. I wanted to make a great love story, I wanted to make a great epic and then you realize that the truth of it is that it's so hard to make a great film. It's hard to get a great role. Those big expectations change to realism pretty quickly. But what's never changed is my desire to work with great directors and to find projects that push me out of my comfort zone and keep me alive. I still don't think I've done my best work
I enjoy doing digital work. I enjoy sculpting digitally. I've had my digital sculptures on covers of the top digital magazines.
I feel more like a creative artist using photography because there's - the digital work is so interesting now. It's come to that. I have had many different stages of photography - there are many different ways to take photos. But I feel now I'm in that stage of my life where I use the camera, you know, in that way.
This is the same problem I have with digital photography. The potential is always remarkable. But the medium never settles. Each year there is a better camera to buy and new software to download. The user never has time to become comfortable with the tool. Consequently too much of the work is merely about the technology. The HDR and QTVR fads are good examples. Instead of focusing on the subject, users obsess over RAW conversion, Photoshop plug-ins, and on and on. For good work to develop the technology needs to become as stable and functional as a typewriter.
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