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I found myself uploading Creative Suites 3 in its entirety one Saturday. I had planned on uploading it, then going on to make some post cards and catch up on the backlog of books.

It seems that spending the morning getting it on the laptop then cleaning it up and finally finding that it took up too much space became peeved.

Peeved because I wasted a morning. Peeved because I really didn’t need CS3. I am quite happy with CS2 but something in me said that I had to have the latest.

I also noticed recently that I have been spending more time upgrading than actually making work. it started with the death of the 2200 but also went through the seemingly never ending task of backing up what I have done. I have backed up so much it takes me more time to find the most recent version than it did to make it.

I find that the digital world has now supplanted the analogue one in yet another facet. This time those losers who would come into camera shops drooling over the Leitax Orgasmoflex 5EX knowing full well that with one their images will be better and a MacArthur Grant will surely follow are now looking down their noses at those with last quarter’s operating system or application.

I fell for it. Everything was running swimmingly but there is was. The newest upgrade and well.

This wouldn’t have happened in the analogue world. In the analogue world – at least the one that I inhabit – passé is de-rigueur. To have something up to date, the latest incarnation seems so…gauche as it is well known that those older tools add a cache – ok enough of the French.

I know that in my position teaching I will have to know and use the latest upgrade but that doesn’t mean that I have to slavishly do the same in my own work. Sitting in front of this for everything has become less and less fulfilling and worse I don’t find that I really have anymore control here than I do in the darkroom. I also find that this brave new digital world is bankrupting me and while there are places where keeping the image making process perfectly dry that can be done in a lit room, means being able to work in more places – been secretly subtly turning Martin and Gabrielle’s place into a imaging place and thought until the week-end of frustration, that the next time they were there it would be more or less complete with a new scanner.

Sunday, I went into the 12C basement to make gelatine silver prints. I turned off the lights, found the negs, made a few test strips – but less than what I make on the computer, and lived by that old work ethic of a faculty member at Columbia College – enter with a full box of paper, leave with an empty one.

It was cathartic. I had to focus on one thing. The time rocking the dish allowed me to think and actually edit as I went along. I was less frantic.

The laptop did come in handy though. With the screen black, I could catch up on all podcasts of Ideas and Outfront that had been piling up.