The other day I took some pictures of Kakalla at The Bug Jar. I tried using two cameras--one with fast film for natural light shots and one with a flash. It seemed to work alright.

The next day I was mentally planning out the remainder of the day at work and was thinking that I would have to drop the film off for processing. Little cans of coiled acetate and emulsion with subtle chemical modifications representing the images I shot--emulsion that would need a developing process to transform those chemical changes into a form that would again be visible.

How quiant.

Later that day I heard that Wolf Camera, the huge camera store chain, had filed Chapter 11. I guess digital photography is taking its toll. Unlike some people, I don't think photographic film will just roll over like vinyl records and cassettes did for the compact disc. It won't go down without a big fight. Digital fixes the per-picture cost problem--photographic pictures still cost around a buck a print. So far, though, it doesn't improve anything else. Digital will win eventually, just not yet.

I'm trying not to be the naysayer (quite a feat for me) as I have been in the past. Consider Starbucks Coffee and Blockbuster Video. I guess Blockbuster was first. I remember when they rolled their blue-and-yellow stores into town and the local video stores cringed. People like to see recent movies on video, but the little stores couldn't manage that. The same thing happened when Starbucks appeared and all but a few coffee shops could compete.

A lot of people complained about it--mostly store owners and people who knew them--and of course myself. "What about the little guy?" was the phrase du jour. These big corporations just come in and drive competition out with low prices and other "unfair" tactics then they'll screw us over.

Well, I was as wrong as everyone else. We still have Video Barn and Hyatt's Video, Java's and Moonbeans. There's a few others too. What we don't have is Bunghole Video, with its fifty aging tapes, and Mudville Coffee, with cups of yesterday's sludge for $4 a cup. Who cares? We ended up keeping the best of what we had, and adding one more store to each market to set the benchmark.

What does this have to do with digital photography? Well, it is going to shake down the competition. We're going to see quite a few stores shutting their doors because they can't keep up. The places that will make it recognize that digital is the way of the future, but film will not be left in the past for a while. It's actually a pretty good situation because there is a lot of time.

• A.I. - In the future, scientists figure out what both "intelligence" and "love" are and decide to waste it on a stupid robot boy. Ain't It Cool had a review by this guy Moriarty who said that when you see it, don't get your hopes up too high because the movie is kind of dumb.
• Baby Boy - As a sequel to Boyz N the Hood, this story follows a guy who's got a couple kids by different mothers but still lives with his own mother.
• Pootie Tang - Adapted from a sketch on the "The Chris Rock Show", Pootie Tang is a crimefighter/recording artist who spouts gibberish nobody can understand.
• crazy/beautiful - Two kids from opposite sides of the proverbial tracks fall in love ... one a poor Latino and the other an outcast in an affluent neighborhood. Awwwwwwwwww...
• Pandaemonium - Based on the life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his relationship with William Wordsworth, what should be a dry and boring work of cinema is supposedly rather engaging.

Winner of the 1998 Pultzer Price, the show is a funny, surprising and devastating tale of survival as seen through the lens of a troubled relationship between a young girl and an older man. It is the story of a woman who learns the rules of the road (and life) from behind the wheel.