Move along.  Nothing to see here.
    At least there won't be for awhile.
    My muse is dead.  Digital killed her.
    Don't get me wrong.  Digital photography is a great thing.  Instant results.  Pictures at ridiculously high ASA's that look cleaner than 400 speed film did back in the day.  Take hundreds of shots and not worry about running out of film and be able to evaluate them there and then.  It's wonderful, really.  But it's also cold, mechanical, lifeless.  The process I mean, not the photographs.  I've seen amazing photographs that were done digitally.  I don't even pretend to say that the final product is superior or inferior to film.  But for all the technological marvel and instant results, it just leaves me cold.   
    Film photography to me has always been like alchemy.  Those of us who practiced the art were like alchemists.  We had to capture the shot with limited opportunity and it had to be right and we had really no way of knowing if it was except by our past experience with that camera and that film and that chemistry and that paper.  Change one ingredient and it was a whole other ball game.  You went out and took your shot, then brought the film home.  You took it out of its canister or unrolled it from its paper backing in complete darkness and put it on a reel that you sealed into a light tight tank, like putting an offering into a holy grail.  Then into this cup you poured in succession the chemicals, at the right temperatures and for the right times, hoping to have the film transformed into images, and if you screwed it up, they were gone.  It was organic, alive.  Even if you sent the stuff out to be developed, if you cared about  your pictures you made sure to send it to a lab that knew what it was doing, and even then you prayed they'd get it right.
    Photography now is like the society it takes place in.  Computerized and efficient.  People don't talk to each other anymore.  They text and message.  Sure, sites like myspace and facebook and websites like this very one make it easy to share the photographs now with many more people, but often this is done to the response of a numbered rating.  You used to have to show people the pictures and take the criticisms or the praise in person.  And the picture you showed them was the picture, with no apologies to be made about having to downsize for the web or how different sites and browsers rendered the detail or the color.
    Now I realize some coming across this will be calling bullshit, but that's how I feel about it, at least right now.  I'll just have to wait and see if anything can rekindle what was lit over thirty years ago.