Daniel Palmer: Can you tell me about your experience with digital cameras?
Trish Morrissey: I took to digital film, if you like, moving image, instantly. I never used analogue video, always digital. It was the instant accessibility of it, being able to work on it immediately on your own computer, to be able to do it all myself. I was more reluctant to do that with photography, and I still am, because there is something about the quality of the analogue – though it's probably also because I have been using film for 20 years.
Daniel Palmer: And you have the skills and the equipment, the setup.
Trish Morrissey: And I have the skills. Yeah, exactly. Though I did do a digital shoot just a couple of weeks ago, a commission for the Photographers’ Gallery. They are doing a project where they are asking photographers to photograph somebody who lives in London from one of the Olympic countries. They wanted the end result to be digital files, and for me to photograph on 5x4, – which is what I would like to do – buy the film, process the film, contact the film, choose the image, print the image, scan the film and have it matched to the print would have been too expensive and time consuming. So I decided that this is the time to take the plunge and use a digital camera.
Daniel Palmer: And whose digital camera did you use?
Trish Morrissey: I borrowed my sister-in-law's, actually, who is also a professional photographer. It's a Digital SLR, Canon 5D, which incidentally is considered the camera to use in the moving-image community. In video mode, with SLR lens quality, and 35-millimeter chip, it looks like film. The only problem is the sound; you have to record that separately and edit it together. One of the big draw backs for me about digital video cameras, even professional ones, is the depth-of-field thing. I mean, everything is wide and flat and looks pretty hideous. Even when you are zooming in on something, the out-of-focus bits aren't that out of focus, really; they are still fairly sharp – but for a film, it looks amazingly great.
Daniel Palmer: Can you tell me about your experience of using that camera?
Trish Morrissey: Well, I haven't used an SLR of any type for years. I mean, I usually work with either 5x4, where the image will be a proper, constructed, thought-about, researched, big-moment photograph, or on my mobile phone or snappy camera – but there's never been anything in between. So to pick this thing up, for a start, it felt like it was Plasticine or jelly; it was like I didn't even know how to hold it anymore. The mechanics of holding an SLR are very different compared to a 5x4, which you barely touch (it's on the tripod, you don't actually hold it). So the actual taking the picture was like, “Oh, it happened”. I felt like it was driving rather than I was in control of it; it was very bizarre. But I think that was more to do with the fact that I hadn't photographed in this way for a long time, rather than it being digital. I think it might have been the same if it was a film camera. And then of course you have the ability to instantly see the photograph – in fact, you have to in order to check it. But the thing I really like about film, or liked about film – which other people call lab fear – I call time (laughing), where you can do the picture, think about it in your mind, leave it for a bit, come back to it, and it's different. Because when you are taking photographs, there is always an emotional element. Even if it's not actually an emotional moment, because it's coming from inside you somehow, there is some sort of an emotional attachment to the process, which time erodes. So if you wait a week, that emotional attachment is usually pretty much gone; you can actually see the pictures for themselves. I found that particularly when I was doing a lot of work that involved photographing myself, because you have to first of all get past the fact that it's a picture of yourself!
Also, I was surprised at how little latitude there is with digital capture. It's more like working with very high-contrast transparency – which I was really shocked by, because I am used to working with negative, which has oodles of latitude. And with negative, I like to overexpose it, but if you do that digitally you’re going to get a lot of highlights, all blown out, the whites all gone (the histogram flashing to indicate!). I realize it’s just a matter of getting used to it and on the positive side, it felt very playful. I was able to try all sorts of different things very quickly, whereas with 5x4 it would have been a lot more methodical and stilted.
Daniel Palmer: Can I ask you about when you are working on your artwork, it is going through a digital process at some stage?
Trish Morrissey: Not all of them, actually. Of the 12 pictures that I used in the final exhibition in Front, two of them were printed digitally and the rest of them didn't have any digital technology involved in them at all. They went straight from negative, and they were printed analogue.
Daniel Palmer: Why were two of them digitally printed?
Trish Morrissey: Because they needed to have work, they needed some corrections, which without the digital possibilities would have meant I had to reshoot them.
Daniel Palmer: What were the corrections?
Trish Morrissey: One was flare, and the other was to move an arm (laughing).
Daniel Palmer: You moved an arm?
Trish Morrissey: I moved an arm (laughing).
Daniel Palmer: Why?
Trish Morrissey: Well, because in one picture the young woman’s face was perfect, but her body wasn't right. Also you couldn’t see the shell, while in the other frame she had the shell in her hand as if she were showing it. It was perfect, evoking Botticelli’s Venus.
Daniel Palmer: Well, this is fascinating, because if we weren’t in the digital age, you probably would not have done this, right? And the shell is important part of the picture, especially as she is the sort of the ‘babe’ in the shot.
Trish Morrissey: Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Palmer; So you basically stole the hand and shell pose from another of the negatives. Is that what you did?
Trish Morrissey: I can’t remember exactly what I did, to be honest; but there were definitely two negatives involved.
Daniel Palmer: Was it your idea, or someone's suggestion?
Trish Morrissey: It was totally my idea. I couldn't decide which image to choose, having to choose one or the other was very compromising, but being able to choose the best bits of two negatives and have them put together was fantastic. That picture wouldn’t have existed like that without digital.
Daniel Palmer: Can you talk about the process? You mentioned that you didn’t get involved in it.
Trish Morrissey: I was there while it was done. It wasn’t just like giving it to somebody to do and then coming back to it. I sat with them while they did it on Photoshop.
Daniel Palmer: And how was that process in terms of producing a print?
Trish Morrissey: Very difficult. When you used to print analogue, you’d go and you’d say, “Well, I want this print, and I want it to look like this”. And you might do a test-print and then they’d work on it with you; they might do four tests and then they’d do a print, and then it is usually about right. With digital, because of the way the machinery is, it’s like: “We are not using glossy today, we are using matte paper. You have to wait until tomorrow.” The other thing was that the charging system seems to be a bit strange where you pay a lot of money for a bespoke service where you get it printed basically as it would have been analogue where they do tests on it. Otherwise, they expect to just take your file and print it however they like – which is just ridiculous. So pricing is a bit weird, though that may have been specific to this lab, I don't know.
Daniel Palmer: And what about color balance?
Trish Morrissey: Yeah, it was hard work to get there; but we got there in the end, by testing, testing, and testing. But the good thing is that once they did that and got it right, I’ve been able to just go, “Can you do another one?”, and it's been perfect every time. You couldn’t do that with the analogue, because it's never going to be identical. It could be very similar, but this was absolutely identical.
Daniel Palmer: A lot people talk about struggling to get rich blacks from a digital printing process. Did you have any issues with that?
Trish Morrissey: Not really, because these beach scenes were high key and there's not really any black as such in there.
Daniel Palmer: When you were in Melbourne in January 2010, you were showing next to Shane Hulbert who had been using a 5x4 camera with a digital back. I was very curious that you found the prints overly digital for your taste?
Trish Morrissey: Yes, I wouldn’t tolerate those artifacts.
Daniel Palmer: You wouldn’t?
Trish Morrissey: I wouldn’t tolerate them. It was the halos I was particularly troubled by, because it just looks so fake. It's where digital technology fails, basically. When there is dark subject against a light sky, at the border where they meet, the camera is confused, as it is a binary system, it is kind of going: “Am I on, or am I off? Am I on, or am I off? I don’t know. I will just switch off anyway and see what happens.” It probably could have been got rid of by just cloning in a bit of sky on top, I’m sure. But for some reason, he didn’t do that. It just looks odd.
Daniel Palmer: At the time I thought that you were just being very connoisseurial as a photographer about the tones and the richness, the creamy kind of analogue as opposed to digital; but your comments become more interesting now that I know you’ve combined negatives to produce a single print!
Trish Morrissey: Yes, but my digital prints looked seamless possibly because they were originated on negative, and matched to a small print that I made myself using an enlarger, so that in amongst 10 other analogue prints, nobody would have picked them out.
Daniel Palmer: Whereas the digital capture feels a lot crunchier…?
Trish Morrissey: There is a digital look. But the thing is, it's probably because of my age. It's probably because I was born and grew up in the analogue era. I mean, in 20 years’ time, there may be people who don’t know or who haven’t seen or who haven’t seen face-to-face a picture that was originated on negative and printed that way. I mean, there is a look and a feel. The quality is hard to express – it’s smoothness. Analogue pictures just look smooth, whereas digital ones often have a crunchiness to them. There is a hardness to them.
Daniel Palmer: I guess this is one of the things we’re really interested in: what is gained and lost in the shift to digital imaging? Obviously, the gain is primarily convenience and cost and so on. But you don’t use Photoshop yourself?
Trish Morrissey: I do cloning (laughing), to touch up.
Daniel Palmer: So it’s pretty much what you would do through analogue. But previously you would have done that on the print, not the negative, wouldn’t you – while now you’re working on the file?
Trish Morrissey: Yes. But actually, my most recent work, which nobody has seen yet, they are actually quite digital. I've actually put together two pictures into one picture.
Daniel Palmer: Ah, interesting: I wondered if the digitally-altered arm was the beginning of a slippery slide into the fantasy world!
Trish Morrissey: It probably is the beginning of a slippery slide.
Daniel Palmer: So you’ve left reality behind? (laughing).
Trish Morrissey: Maybe I have. Maybe I have. Whatever happened, in one picture I couldn't get a bit of rock that was important to the image into the frame like it had been in my recce picture. I had done the tests on a digital SLR with a lens apparently the same focal length as the 5x4 lens I was using, but I guess because of the different formats, I couldn't get it all in. So I decided I would just photograph the rock separately and bring it in digitally.
Daniel Palmer: The world is now available for your manipulation.
Trish Morrissey: I am thinking that the reason why I haven’t done it before is that it's only now that it’s actually starting to become feasible. The quality is coming, and the price is coming down. And I knew this would come at some point, and that’s why I didn’t rush in ten years ago.
Daniel Palmer: And of course in the meantime analogue is now taking on a different quality. Analogue fetishism is in full swing as digital becomes the mainstream…
Trish Morrissey: You mean like Julian Schnabel now having his Polaroids at auction for 50 grand each? But another fear is future proofing things, because talking about accessibility; I mean, a film is always a film is always a film; it's an object. It's a thing you can touch, you can hold, you can do things with it, which is why a lot of archives are still holding on to film, because it's tangible, it's physical and it's fileable, whereas digital formats are constantly changing.
