Saturday, March 03, 2018

Is effectiveness important?

Is effectiveness important?
Well, okay, the short answer is “yes”... Without the effectiveness of industrialisation, we would not have the 4-century long economic boom and gains in health and peace which we are enjoying.

But I’m suspecting it can be taken too far. I’ve been a total addict to effectiveness, for example always wanting the smallest possible camera with sufficient image quality. But sometimes I find that the super-ease of image-making in the digital era almost makes it *less* fun to make pictures than it was when you had to stand in the darkroom for hours to make a couple of good prints. Or at least more satisfying. Why are we only satisfied with an achievement if it was hard to do?
I really don’t know.

4 comments:

  1. I quite enjoyed making black and white prints. But the business of trying to get the colour right on Cibachrome (chosen because I already had lots of slides) was so long-winded and expensive that I just gave up.

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  2. Yes, I think Cibachrome was difficult, I saw some bad ones. (And very contrasty it was.)

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  3. We want our technology to be effective, but we also need to feel effective ourselves. The darkroom allowed us to use our specialized skills, resulting in that satisfying sense of achievement. I think that developing and applying our skills is key to personal satisfaction, and our own sense of effectiveness is critically important to our sense of well-being.

    For me, activities that draw on my own abilities seem more satisfying than those depending on effective technologies. For example, woodworking with a sharp chisel and hand-plane vs. power tools (but I still want all the power goodies in my workshop!). The final product needs to have beauty or utility to draw out that sense of accomplishment.

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  4. Thank you, Russ, that’s actually a very good point!

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