What luxurious problems I face, where it is impossible to make a wrong choice. In view, two outcomes move me ahead a few spaces on the board game of life. I can’t believe my decision has really come down to that old standby – film or digital? What kind of artist do I wish to become? What kind of work do I really wish to focus on now.

It’s so easy, you see, to give in to technology. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with it either! The Herreshoff family of boat builders sought out what was then cutting edge material such as aluminum in their designs. Were they alive today they surely would use carbon fibre. Just so, I wonder if Ansel Adams would walk about with a Leica M9? Throw a digital back onto his Hasselblad?

Search Flickr and you will find miles and miles of competent photography – the vast majority of which comes from digital sensors. It’s a great learning tool, really. You can inspect images from a range of different cameras, study the effect of different focal lengths, analyze compositions that do or no not work. It all represents a lot of competition! Your work, scattered amongst the noise of so many millions of other photographs, runs the risk of being, well, equalized? You become part of the baseline, part of the control group. How does one rise above?

If you’re serious about photography – and I mean really serious – you need to focus. You need to put all your energy into a project that is coherent and strive for a body of work which conveys a story or theme. Images which seem to reach right out of the picture and hug your heart. You know this feeling when you walk into a gallery of exceptional work.

I have pre-ordered a Nikon D7000, yes. Yes, I am sure that it will be an excellent camera, exceedingly capable for a wide range of practices. But again I ask the question, what can I do to differentiate my results from the all assimilating Borg cube of Flickr?

Digital sensors are perfect almost to a fault. There can be no accidents on the electronic side of things. It either works as it should, or not at all. This is great if you want consistent results for professional work such as commercial photography or sports. But what about fine art photography? What about the creation of anything artistic at all? I believe that one of the fundamental elements of the creative process is allowing room for error, and integrating error into your vision.

When a painter mixes color, there are any number of ways to make a hue which might be called “green”. A very careful painter can achieve great consistency, but not perfectly so. Different brands and kinds of paint, of brush, canvas, or finishing, can all interact through the guidance of the painter to create a unique result.

A wood carver too can select from a diversity of woods, of different densities and color. The work will be affected by the subtle randomness of tools and environment just as the painter. Even the filmmaker shooting a digital camera system will be allowed plenty of room for accident through the collaborative process of making a movie.

But the individual photographer, shooting with a digital camera, has less opportunity for accident. Less room for random transformation by the environment. This has aided in creating the situation described in this lament by Herzog, that “…the images that surround us today are worn out; they are abused and useless and exhausted.”

Shooting film provides more room for error. There are variations in chemistry. Different film stocks have different looks which are not at all easily duplicated in Photoshop, and attempting to do so would be somehow inauthentic.

Right? I mean… am I right?

I just don’t know. I’m torn between two methods of working. Each will produce images, but which – oh my which! – is the fine art approach?

If I’m really going to the tropics (as it seems I am), and I hope to photograph jungle wildlife, then in theory, a weather resistant dSLR with fast lenses should be a good choice. But if I’m gunning for a gallery, does this get me where I want to be?

What about another choice? What about doing what few would dare to? I get a Hasselblad. An old, boxy, clunky, heavy Hassie with slow lenses. I record my images onto big old paper rolls of Kodak T-100 and Fuji Velvia and even Polaroid. I set up the bulk of my shots on a tripod. Work methodically. Plan carefully. Expose with the aid of a dedicated spot meter. It would be challenging, frustrating, difficult and demanding work – but my results would reflect this conflict in the best possible way. Somehow, my images would show the heart and toil that I poured into capturing them.

But I am sacrificing a few things which I thought at first I needed. No video on this frontier. No twilight shooting at ISO 6400. No autofocus, no zoom lenses, one frame at a time. No instant replay – no second chances.

Yet at the same time, I don’t have to hike about with hard drives. Suddenly I become less of a target for theft. Suddenly my camera gear laughs at the rain because it’s 95% mechanical.

There are so many points in favor of either system, I really feel like flipping a coin. I can only afford one or the other, not both. Each package will cost roughly the same.

So the question remains – how do I create images to reach out and hug your heart?