Is the digital world killing what I love about photography?

[PDL]

Digital photography has not killed film - it has just provided a more universal method of capturing images. The vast majority of digital images are just "snapshots" - pieces of someones vision of life that get looked at and passed over quickly.

What we are seeing is the second bloom of SLR's. I remember that in the 70's SLR prices went down and every tourist got one. SLR's were tourist jewlery and Kodak/Fuji were making money hand over fist. With automation, anyone could take pictures with good glass, in focus and relatively well exposed. During the 80's the P&S came to the front. The 35mm auto everything that would fit in your pocket, go out in the rain, became disposable and so simple even your 10 year old could use it. These cameras became the auto-fied box cameras of the age.

In the 90's digital came out - and they were very-very expensive. DSLR's came out and the photojounalists, sport photographers and general news photographers jumped at the oportunity of getting images sent electronically back to their newspapers, magazines and other news outlets in nearly real time. This is something that news people have always wanted. The arts people started to notice when the digital image software got to the point where you did not have to deal with darkrooms as much. It was post processing that gave digital the big push.

Now we live in a world where people expect to see the image as soon as it is taken. DSLR manufactures are painting themselves into the same corner they did with film SLR's in the late 70's. High quality and cheap, soon everyone will have them and no one will be want the next best thing, because they can not justify the cost of getting a new camera for nothing more that 2 more megapixels or 2 more fps.

I still love film, still shoot film (once in a great while) and I understand that film does not require a computer to look at the images. I love slides, all you need is an eyeball, the same goes for prints. How many of us really print our digital images? Not that many I bet. If I could get a good cheap 4x5 digital back - I would, so for now I will be shooting film with the 4x5. Digital is fragile - no computer, no images. Change your software, no images due to no backward compatability - same goes for OS, hardware etc. Lose a hard drive - say good bye to your images forever. Wait 10 years and try to read your "archived" images - good luck in finding a device that can read your old format files or even find a plug to put your USB version 2.0 drive in, my bet is that the interface will just disappear.

I will still be able to pick up a slide and look at it with my eyeball.

Oh - the thing I miss the most about film --- B&W in particular --- watching an image appear on a blank sheet of paper in the "soup" in a darkroom. For those of you who are digital only, that is thing to behold - pure magic - and just plain fun.

I love digital too, but there are so many images, what to do with them that is the issue.
Remember:
"The truth is that anybody can make a photograph.
The trouble is not that photographs are hard to make.
The trouble is that they are hard to make intelligent and interesting”
John Szarkowski 2000 1925-2007

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[reeftool]

I had my share of surprise pictures many time through the years but the main reason in my case was I didn't always have the money on hand to have 10 or more roll of vacation pictures developed so I would take in a few at a time. Every once in a while I would forget or misplace a roll. I once found a roll that was in a drawer for several years and had it developed and it was shots of a family vacation trip. We all had a great time with those old pictures and a good laugh. I prefer digital now because I would rather have my pictures right away. I developed my own B&W also for a time but stopped after our second kid was born because there wasn't space for a permanent setup and sealing off the bathroom just got to be too much of a hassle. I still have my film cameras but they don't get used much. True, you do need a computer to view them if you don't make prints but we always have a computer on somewhere in the house and all our photos are backed up on all 3 computers. I find them much more convienent for viewing than searching through many albums and old shoe boxes full of prints. One of my ongoing projects has been scanning all those old photos and putting them on the computers also. I was very slow to embrace digital but since doing so I have no real desire right now to go back to film. I do print my favorite digital pictures and still have photo albums of those prints and lots of pictures in frames all over the house because I do like a printed photo but most viewing is done on the computers.

[alohadave]

Originally Posted by HGMonaro

probably means Garry Winogrand

That's him.

This is the article I read:

Black & White World: A Celebration of Photography. Photoshop monochrome techniques, traditional darkroom how-to advice, famous photographers, digital cameras and software, and much more!

[deudeu]

I was talking about this with a friend of mine yesterday.
He is a student in Fine arts photography and he told me something that makes sense to me:

With the digital revolution came a new age of photographic illeteracy.

What he meant by that is that with the ability to produce tones of shots without spending any money, people are losing the photographic knowledge they didn't even know they had.

Because of the thousands of snap shots taken and displayed everywhere, the photographic standards are being lowered. The fact that with film, everytime you were pushing the shutter you were spending money, made people more concerned about their technique, their composition, their exposure... Now people press the button without thinking, and they accept the images without thinking as well. Just look at how many actuations our cameras get. Photography, for the majority of people, is becoming about trial and error, not science and love of the medium.

This explains the "nice picture! You must have a good camera" because for most people, taking pictures is less about the skills of the person behind the camera than about the camera itself. With film at least, when one was showing his work, he was always disconected from his tool, and the artifact that he had in his hand, a piece of paper, was simple enough that to the masses, the photographer was what produced the image, not the camera.

But don't get me wrong. I don't miss the days of film only. If I did, I would just go back to film. But I love my digital camera. I just think that for people to appreciate what passionate people do, the passionnate people need to protect their images and threat them with care and respect. I don't want my best pictures to be thrown into a pool of garbage snapshots (by garbage I mean that they don't hold any artisic value, or at least, they were not taken with the intent to be artsy). I don't have anything against snapshots and careless photography, but it is just not what I do.

I don't claim to hold the truth on this though, I am just throwing my opinion out there to see what people are thinking. I am pleased to see that it got people talking!

[Nesster]

I tend to be agnostic on this, I do like both.

However, it occurs to me you can have a bit of what you miss about film: just get a bunch of small size (128K) memory cards... each is like a roll of film. When you fill one up, toss it into a box. A year or two later, pick some at random to 'develop' on the pc...

[philmorley]

your images do as you please with them

personally I have the pcs in the house on the my pics screensaver, I often find the kids sitting looking through pics in the random order. I often walk past and see a pic I took years ago and the memories come flooding back

[Mallee Boy]

Originally Posted by deudeu

I was talking about this with a friend of mine yesterday.
He is a student in Fine arts photography and he told me something that makes sense to me:

With the digital revolution came a new age of photographic illeteracy.

What he meant by that is that with the ability to produce tones of shots without spending any money, people are losing the photographic knowledge they didn't even know they had.

Because of the thousands of snap shots taken and displayed everywhere, the photographic standards are being lowered. The fact that with film, everytime you were pushing the shutter you were spending money, made people more concerned about their technique, their composition, their exposure... Now people press the button without thinking, and they accept the images without thinking as well. Just look at how many actuations our cameras get. Photography, for the majority of people, is becoming about trial and error, not science and love of the medium.

This explains the "nice picture! You must have a good camera" because for most people, taking pictures is less about the skills of the person behind the camera than about the camera itself. With film at least, when one was showing his work, he was always disconected from his tool, and the artifact that he had in his hand, a piece of paper, was simple enough that to the masses, the photographer was what produced the image, not the camera.

But don't get me wrong. I don't miss the days of film only. If I did, I would just go back to film. But I love my digital camera. I just think that for people to appreciate what passionate people do, the passionnate people need to protect their images and threat them with care and respect. I don't want my best pictures to be thrown into a pool of garbage snapshots (by garbage I mean that they don't hold any artisic value, or at least, they were not taken with the intent to be artsy). I don't have anything against snapshots and careless photography, but it is just not what I do.

I don't claim to hold the truth on this though, I am just throwing my opinion out there to see what people are thinking. I am pleased to see that it got people talking!

All very true and I wont argue with any of it.
What I observe though is more and more people being exposed (no pun intended) to photography through digital and falling in love with it.

Some of these people just love that family/ holiday snap (or careless photog) whilst others, once exposed to the possibilities then challenge themselves to discover the art within.

Some others are just smitten with the the technology and loose themselves forever in morass of megapixels and technical data, forever chasing the next best thing...but, hey, they're happy and dont harm anyone.

Those that have discovered the art within, discover a whole new world within their fields of interest and produce amazing work. Some of these people seek out training, whilst others, graduates of the School of Hard Knocks, prefer to self train, finding that sometimes the 'trainers or educators' are teaching something that they don't find relevant to their personal requirements. Some prefer to create art, whilst others prefer to cpature an accurate record of what they have seen.

Its all good, its all creative in its own right and its all to be applauded....and it is all thanks to digital.

Thanks for the thread, makes a pleasant change to some of the technical mumbo jumbo.

Cheers
Grant

[deudeu]

Originally Posted by Mallee Boy

Thanks for the thread, makes a pleasant change to some of the technical mumbo jumbo.

Cheers
Grant

It is my pleasure, really. Since I have joined this forum I have had such a different experience than on other forums. I feel like people here are more educated and more open minded.

So it is a great pleasure and honor to read you opinions!

[MRRiley]

Originally Posted by deudeu

I was talking about this with a friend of mine yesterday.
He is a student in Fine arts photography and he told me something that makes sense to me:

With the digital revolution came a new age of photographic illeteracy.

What he meant by that is that with the ability to produce tones of shots without spending any money, people are losing the photographic knowledge they didn't even know they had.

Because of the thousands of snap shots taken and displayed everywhere, the photographic standards are being lowered. The fact that with film, everytime you were pushing the shutter you were spending money, made people more concerned about their technique, their composition, their exposure... Now people press the button without thinking, and they accept the images without thinking as well. Just look at how many actuations our cameras get. Photography, for the majority of people, is becoming about trial and error, not science and love of the medium.

This explains the "nice picture! You must have a good camera" because for most people, taking pictures is less about the skills of the person behind the camera than about the camera itself. With film at least, when one was showing his work, he was always disconected from his tool, and the artifact that he had in his hand, a piece of paper, was simple enough that to the masses, the photographer was what produced the image, not the camera.

But don't get me wrong. I don't miss the days of film only. If I did, I would just go back to film. But I love my digital camera. I just think that for people to appreciate what passionate people do, the passionnate people need to protect their images and threat them with care and respect. I don't want my best pictures to be thrown into a pool of garbage snapshots (by garbage I mean that they don't hold any artisic value, or at least, they were not taken with the intent to be artsy). I don't have anything against snapshots and careless photography, but it is just not what I do.

I don't claim to hold the truth on this though, I am just throwing my opinion out there to see what people are thinking. I am pleased to see that it got people talking!

DeuDeu,

Some of the most elitist people I know are art students. In their world everything must have several meanings and the more levels of meaning the more significant the art. These are the people that take out of focus shots of the backs of people heads and put them into a gallery pretending there is a cosmic meaning to the arrangement. Please realize I speak from experience here. I was an art major and earned a BA in photography back in the 1980s. It took me decades to free myself from the elitist and narrow minded "art school" mentality.

As for digital creating an age of "photographic illiteracy" this is no more true than an opinion that the ability of millions of people to use a paintbrush makes painting less literate. Accomplished and "literate" photographers are no more negatively affected by the millions of snapshots taken every day than a talented and "literate" painter is affected by people copying Bob Ross paintings. More than 99% of people who pick up a camera do so only to record their lives. They do not pretend to create art beyond what their family or friends may appreciate. How are "photographic standards" lowered because of the proliferation of the snapshot. Indeed I think just the opposite may be true. Could it be possible that the more lousy snapshots there are that the real good work can stand out. Admittedly it may be harder to find in the sheer volume but consider how brightly a diamond shines in the midst of a seam of coal.

To address the issue of people losing knowledge because it is now cheap to take lots of photos, again I think you and your friend have it somewhat backward. Does the ease and"cheapness" of digital cause lots of bad photos to be taken. Sure it does to some extent, but you are ignoring the potential for experimentation and individual improvement. Many people learn best when they can do something and fail and try again until they succeed. Digital makes this much easier and indeed levels the playing field somewhat. A relatively poor person can now shoot enough to learn from his mistakes whereas with film you had to be relatively wealthy to shoot and develop enough film to gain practice and experience. People were admittedly more frugal with the shutter button because film and processing were expensive.

This simply reflects the expense load balance of film vs digital With film photography the average (discounting high or low-end models) 35mm film camera was rarely over $200-300. However, film was an expensive consumable and processing added to the expense every time you shot a roll. Thus the expense was heavily balanced on the"production" end of the process and was potentially "endless"..

Digital on the other hand is a front-end loaded loaded process in that it requires a significantly higher outlay of cash even for an "average" DSLR, and computers and image processing software. However, once you have the "stuff" the per image cost is negligable unless you do a lot of printing.

One of the beauties of digital though, is that you can also get in fairly cheaply with a decent P&S camera and free software. Most people these days (in developed countries anyway) already have a suitable computer around the house so there is little if any additional dedicated expense there.

You are correct in that many people equate a good photo with a "nice camera" however this is no different than in the film days. If you make a print from a digital file you are exactly as "disconnected" from the original click of the digital shutter as you were from the click of the film shutter. The process in-between is irrelevant and neither adds or subtracts intrinsic value.

I do admire your passion for what I'll call "the historical integrity" of photography but I submit that you are really making much ado about nothing. Today, as an instant in the history of photography and the interpretation of its impacts upon society are questions best left in the hands of posterity. Only the future will tell if photography survived the tidal wave of the digital snapshot. I like to think that the answer will be "yes", just as it survived the advent of roll film and the attendant flood of amateur photographers.

Great debate so far!

Mike

[NaClH2O]

I'm exactly like LaRee. I simply don't have the time to process all the photos I have taken. Some projects get priority, for instance my niece's graduation from HS, but usually its a month or so before I ever get to them. And even longer before I put them up on SmugMug. So I guess I do what you do but not for the same reasons.

NaCl(working 50-60 hrs/week and commuting another 20 adds up)H2O

[deudeu]

Originally Posted by MRRiley

DeuDeu,

Some of the most elitist people I know are art students. In their world everything must have several meanings and the more levels of meaning the more significant the art. These are the people that take out of focus shots of the backs of people heads and put them into a gallery pretending there is a cosmic meaning to the arrangement. Please realize I speak from experience here. I was an art major and earned a BA in photography back in the 1980s. It took me decades to free myself from the elitist and narrow minded "art school" mentality.


Great debate so far!

Mike

I agree with you on the art school elitist point of view. I have had the opportunity to hang around a lot of artists and art students and I came to the conclusion that the difference between artists and non artists is not talent but ego.

Artists are just people with enough ego to think that what they produce is better than the rest and worth showing and selling. Then, if they are convincing enough, they get to practice a lot which helps them develop their skills, but in the end, talent has nothing to do with this. So, I feel like being elitist is the only way to justify their status as an artist (the same is true about politics by the way)

But, to go back to the snapshots and how they are lowering the standards, I don't think that the problem comes from the fact that people take a lot of pictures. I think that the problem comes from the treatment that those pictures receive.

Right now, you see poor quality pictures everywhere, all the time. They were first on the internet, on TV, in Magazines and newspapers. And now, they have become widely accepted and some are even showed in galleries. Anyways, because of this overwhelming display of not inspired pictures, we, as a society, have come to accept this as "photography".
This doesn't mean that fine photography is going to die. Of course, there is still some very talented people out there and their photography does stick out of the rest of the blah... to us. This is true only because of our passion for this art form. But for the rest of the crowd, I think that it is quite different.

But don't get me wrong, I don't want to judge anyone nor their way to use this medium. Their is no good and bad ways to enjoy your camera, as long as you are enjoying yourself you are doing well. The same is true for the pictures.

This is why this thread is about what I love about photography.

I might have to start another thread to ask what it is that people love about taking photos.

Thank you for your opinion, I think that you are much wiser than I am!

[LaRee]

Originally Posted by NaClH2O

I'm exactly like LaRee. I simply don't have the time to process all the photos I have taken. Some projects get priority, for instance my niece's graduation from HS, but usually its a month or so before I ever get to them. And even longer before I put them up on SmugMug. So I guess I do what you do but not for the same reasons.

NaCl(working 50-60 hrs/week and commuting another 20 adds up)H2O

You are right Salty. I pp the 500 wedding photos I took of my son's wedding on June 28th in one week. But that is only because the brides mom along with my sister were dying to see the photos. I burned them all to disc after I pp them and gave them copies. I have many other outings and events I haven't touched like our trip to Pismo Beach and my son's graduation this past month, not to mention the day trips my youngest son and I take almost every Tuesday and Thursday.
I'm now in the process of trying to learn more about my ProShow Producer program. I've made slide shows for my youngest son's baseball team that were really well received but they were pretty simple. I want to make a really slick dvd of my oldest son's wedding. I bought "The Official Photodex Guide to ProShow" and I'm studying it now. It's easy to make a standard slide show with ProShow complete with music and transitions etc. But to combine slides and motion effects is going to take lots of time and study.

Dang I wish I had more free time!

[Wombat]

Originally Posted by MRRiley

DeuDeu,

Some of the most elitist people I know are art students....Great debate so far!

Mike

Mike, you ought to write a book. You speak so eloquently and your logic is impeccable. Thank you for your responses. The ones directed to me contained stuff I needed to hear and I'll go and do some more staring at the sea and pondering. The rest has been truly inspiring and refreshing. This is indeed a great debate.

[TaoMaas]

I can somewhat agree with the OP because, for me, digital IS killing a bit of what I loved about film. I find I'm less picky about what I shoot these days and I usually don't take as much care with my imaging as I used to do. But maybe that's not such a bad thing because I also find that digital has made me more spontaneous. I'm taking more pictures of my everyday life. Things that I wouldn't have shot before because I would have had to carry a tripod everywhere with me or else used high speed film. (And I hated the grain of any film over ASA 100.) So my "serious" photography has suffered somewhat, but it's being replaced by a freer, more spontaneous style of photography that's rapidly becoming just as satisfying as my more traditional shooting. IMO, it's all good and, at my age, I'm happy to still be evolving.

[chedoy]

In the spirit of not taking the OP too seriously, I relate the story of my brother-in-law, who was so technology challenged that for years, he had to have his son load his fixed lens 35mm compact. Of course, this was only once or twice a year at Christmas or at the 4th of Juky BBQ,

Then when he became a Grandpa, his photo output jumped exponentially. Grandma would fill entire albums in a month and inflict them on us when we saw them. The son was still loading that camera. The flash eventually died. I said Yay, now he goes digital.

For father's day, they got dear brother-in-law a digital. I asked him about it last weekend. He pulled out a small lowes case, opened it and pulled out a second leather case with a little kodak inside. Take a picture? Out of his other pocket comes a disposable film camera and that's what he is using now.