I heard it again yesterday for the billionth time: “Digital Photography”. Isn’t it time we drop the word ‘digital’?
Seems we’ve managed to drop the “electric” from “electric guitar” in common parlance.
We found it easy to drop the word “acrylic” from “acrylic painting” when that came on the scene with oils.
We quickly ditched the “digital” from “digital music” when it took the lead over records and tapes and CDs.
I suppose by-and-large our industry has dropped the word, but given that digital and analog photography are fundamentally the same thing, isn’t it time we implore the rest of the world to assimilate the term “digital photography” back into “photography” as a whole?
couldn’t disagree more. digital and film are different. different technologies, different techniques, different philosophies, different histories. don’t force everyone into the same camp just because you’re into “photographer unity”…plz. we’ll stay in our camp and you stay in yours. digital photography does not represent photography, and they’re plenty of people who agree with me.
that’s just it, james.
why the “camps”? i shoot both digitally and i shoot film. so do i have to choose one?
these distinctions are trying at best and artificial at worst. the word photography means writing with light. isn’t that what we’re doing?
It’s different. Electric guitar is totally different than acoustic, and if you talk to musicians they’ll tell you that. And music is just music. The final product is the same at the beginning and the end: a song. Just because digitalism dominates our western world does not mean it defines us as it so often does these days. We have come to expect digital as the norm. Not that we have to accept it.. I feel some professionals have the right to believe that distinction is sometimes necessary. Hence the resurgence of an analog resistance.
Most people dont give a flip anymore. Photography for the masses is just that. Photography for a bunch of people who don’t really care about production methods; they just want it to look good. And there’s a lot of them, so you know from the start you can’t please them all. So take a million pictures and have THEM choose THE one. They don’t really care how it came about anyways.. Maybe I’ve sniffed too many chemicals in the darkroom, but I know you know the difference. Its just easier to do it digitally 🙂
I think a lot of people have already dropped it. I shoot mostly digi but some 120mm as well, and I can safely say I’m over it. Real photography is in the eye; it is organically produced before the camera is even taken into consideration. The camera (and thus the reproduction of an image) is merely a mechanism. Photography is light and speed and composition and color and flow and depth and a million other things no proud prefix can confine. Call it whatever you want, but I’ll know it when I see it 😉