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?
….. hmmm. nope, don’t agree … I’m a pinholer (for nearly a decade), and even though it’s ‘photography’, it’s the near antithesis of ‘digitial photography’ as it is practised today. It can easily take several hours from inception to completion to get just one pinhole ‘imaget’, whereas a digi-photog could shoot off several thousand images in the same time frame, upload to computer, computa-fritz, print and be selling the next day in multiple sizes, with infinitie print options on any surface …. The digi-technology allows the photog to do that.
In contrast, I first, build my own cameras, do all my own darkroom work. I work with one light-sensitive paper neg, pull one pos print, or two, or three, max, with each print having a slight variance because I do it ‘intuitively’, not ‘by the clock’. It’s an entirely different process.
I’d no more call what I do with pinhole phtoography – ‘digital’ – anymore then I would call it ‘film’ photography. It’s a stand-alone discipline that demands a completely different mind and skill set.
I’m going to further push this ‘devil’s advocate’ role ..Overall, I think much that passes for ‘artful’ photography today is the result of digi-computa-manipulations, meaning, it’s not YOU that’s really doing the WORK. Someone else wrote and perfected the software that you very much rely on and use without thinking.. All you are doing is pushing a button and making a ‘insta-choice’ that someone else has already ‘anticipated’. That’s not ‘photography’ by any stretch, digi or film.
So, nope, I like to know and hear the distinctions. It tells me a great deal about the kind of photography and the kind of photographer who is ‘producing’ images …
thank you for your sanity.
Pinz, I’m not sure it’s fair to paint all “digi-computa-manipulations” with the same brush. The fact the some (many, even) learning photographers do sometimes-uncreatively apply filters doesn’t automatically mean that digital tools are nothing more than choices “someone else has already ‘anticipated'”. That’s unfair to people who are trying to do creative work using the tools that they choose.
You really lose me when you say “That’s not ‘photography’ by any stretch, digi or film.” I respect your dedication to your craft, and I agree that mindless use of any tool usually produces lesser work, but *photography* is a big art form, with room for many approaches. When you declare that work to be “not photography”, you limit photography, and I hope we can all celebrate the breadth and depth of what is possible in photography.
couldn’t agree more…
Geez if ‘m commenting on the rabble I mustn’t have anything else to do! 🙁
hahaha I agree, now talk to you connections at the big companies to have the stop using it in their media that is teaching the public to use the term “digital photography” 🙂 Love your points of view.
Already have.
Done!