Noise was once our friend

Well, maybe not friend in the traditional sense, but certainly an accepted flavour and character of photography. More then that though, noise was a symbol of art, danger, sports, spooky night scenes, police actions, and much more. In short, noise meant ‘things of the night’.

Before we go any further I’d like to mention that by noise I refer to anything generated at the time of exposure or development, not whatever shmoosh ends up on your film after that.

So, When does one get noise?

• Using fast film with nice big breadcrumb-sized grains to soak up all the juicy light. Where would anyone ever need such raw photon vacuuming muscle?  Why, out in the jungle at night, or walking around the city at night, or only ambient light to shoot a rainy nighttime football game. Are we seeing a pattern?  The idea that grain equals danger and action lies here.  Verdict: Cool.
• Laughing at your meter and exposing three reckless stops under or even over what you know is correct, then either under developing or over developing to balance the ‘light equation’.  Either way, why would anyone in their right mind do such a thing on purpose. Well sporty film fans, it’s either to get a cool ‘look’ or to use up some of the Tmax400 you have sitting in the freezer, but instead of the measly 400ISO you achieve the super heroic sensitivity of 3200ISO.  So this kind of grain though looking a little different then actual grainy fast film, usually is associated with the same kind of activities as described in the first point. Verdict: Cool.

So what happened?  Why has noise become a symbol of a bad photograph?  Noise is banned from photographs being submitted to many high end stock photography websites.  It has become impossible to sell images which have clear noise.  Well, to be specific, clear digital noise. Film grain is noise.  It’s a chemical process, like pretty much everything happening of interest on earth.  Now we take photographs with an electronic process which we all know is a pretty binary system.  Achieving noise in this world involves math.  So, I suppose it makes sense that noise in this new digital landscape would become demonised.  I mean, it is true,it’s actually quite distracting.  I have to admit, I often have little recourse above attempting repair in Photoshop. When all of my efforts result in my accepting that the electronic din of noise was not going anywhere, I then hop to channel mixer and make myself a nice black and white.

So digital noise is bad.  I get it. How does one now express themselves and be dangerous.  Not that I’m any of that, but I have in my photographic endeavors already run into the technological limits of CCD film.  I often shoot with my camera on 3200.  The thing is great normally, and my work will show how much more prolific and both technically and artistically I have grown in leaps and bounds since switching to digital, but, I can’t do the creative stuff anymore.  The results need to be messed with before anyone will accept them as actual ‘photographs’.    I’m a defiant guy so I have decided that my cult-like mind programming needs to be questioned.  NOISE IS GOOD.  Noise represents the infinite complexity in nature and I actually love a good noise every now and then.