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Re: [OM] [OT] Shutterbug "discovery"

Subject: Re: [OM] [OT] Shutterbug "discovery"
From: Tris Schuler <tristanjohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 10:26:19 -0800

On Monday, March 17, 2003, at 06:49 PM, Tris Schuler wrote:

For illustration, a similar parallel could be drawn to painting. Imagine the death of, say, oils. From a certain date only "digital oils" would be made. No more brushes, no more smocks, only Paint Shop Pro. Or drawing. No more pencils, no more gum erasers, just some CAD title with years-ahead-styling and form.

I don't really think it is the same thing. The meaning of "photography" is writing with light. Camera is short for "camera obscura" or dark room because the first ones were rooms with a lens set in the wall.

Understood.

The point is that digital photography uses a similar camera and is writing with light. The only difference is the form of light sensitive material. Instead of emulsion spread on a glass plate, or a film, it is a light sensitive circuit. There has been an amazing variety of light sensitive materials already used in the capturing and printing of an image. This is just one more way to do it. To equate photography just with the particular process you grew up with is really limiting. Matthew Brady would probably not have liked 35mm cameras and film cassettes, but it is still photography.

Winsor Crosby

But not photography as I've grown up with it, which is the distinction I wished to impress Barry with as he asked me re same. I noted that half or more of my process today engages the digital side, that this technological turning has helped to enhance my work (it is easier, cheaper, faster to effect good change in Photoshop than it ever was or could be in a traditional darkroom). Indeed, it has come to the point that I don't much care (within certain bounds) how my film stock comes back to me developed from whatever lab I give it to, as I have trained myself to improve matters (quickly, surely, ably) simply be subjecting my film to the scan/PSP/PS digital workflow I've developed over time. No matter _what_ I get back, no matter _what_ shape it comes to me, I can and do improve it dramatically in a virtual flash.

Having said that . . . while the statement "it is easier, cheaper, faster to effect good change in Photoshop than it ever was or could be in a traditional darkroom" is true enough, this does not render the digital process the same as the analog, it does not render the end result the same--only similar to one degree or another on both counts. To restate: analog and digital are distinctly different means to only similar ends.

(To complete this process-of-change circle: then we also have the ability to resubmit our image back into analog form by translating what we get from digital workflow back through a kind of printing filter, the result being a hybrid image.)

Brady: I would hazard a guess that our colleague would have taken to smaller, lighter and infinitely more capable equipment like a duckling to water. Whether that means he'd have opted for a 35mm system or something more along the lines of what Adams worked with or something in between I don't know and find it somewhat pointless to conjecture--his work certainly would have gotten along faster had he an SLR or rangefinder in his pack! I think it's clear that _had_ Brady possessed more sophisticated analog gear then his work must have benefited. For all we know Brady might well have passed directly through the analog stage and embraced the first digicam that came his way instead--newer, faster, better might, for all we know, have been his soul's imperative all along.

Look: I have no wish to try and hold back the hands of time. I doubt there's anyone on this list more eager to incorporate new useful photographic technology than me. I admit that I am often put off on various photographic sites by the bevy of digital shooters who seem wholly unaware of the analog side of things and who, moreover, posses no apparent interest whatsoever to discuss the process of photography but rather wish only to present one pretty (and pretty much thoughtless at that) image after the other. But then in truth my experience is there are not so many photographers using analog gear who wish to engage much in the study and discussion of photography but, again, only wish to "strut their stuff" for whatever good strokes and gratification to be had. No news there.

Let's try to put that in context: I don't see the digital side of this dichotomy of photographic technology to be an "enemy" or somehow "responsible" in any way--that resides, if it exists at all, on the human side of the equation.

Again: in and of itself I look on the advent of digital media to be a good deal all around in terms of the greater potential it offers; in actuality, however, I find problems.

Users of digital photographic equipment who work in utter ignorance of the analog side of the greater photographic activity are something regretful, regretful for the reason that I've never known ignorance to march for a single positive step. Ignorance never does anything, it never could for any reason. It is this dynamic which worries me down the road. Maybe it'll all work out for the best, but I think we're headed for a state of greater educated photographic idiocy. In-focus images with sparkling colors will abound; photography per se will become passe.

As always, I hope I'm wrong, I think I'm right.

Tris


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