I’ve been reading quite a lot of blog posts lately about such things as, Who Qualifies As A Photographer?, and Philosophy of Photography: Photograph versus a Snapshot. These are questions that I’m sure have been asked since shortly after a second person made themselves a light tight box and started making images. However, during times of upheaval in the photographic world, I think these questions are naturally asked more often; and the times we find ourselves in now, with not only the digital revolution happening, but online communities making it easier than ever before for even the lowliest of photographers to be seen, must surely qualify as being in upheaval. It is because of this that we are hearing more often than ever before, the question: Are Digital Cameras destroying photography? I have to say no, they are not.
Now I posted a quote a while back in a post to do with the micro-stock market, and it went:
…created an army of photographers who run rampant over the globe, photographing objects of all sorts, sizes and shapes, under almost every condition, without ever pausing to ask themselves, is this or that artistic? …They spy a view, it seems to please, the camera is focused, the shot taken! There is no pause, why should there be? For art may err but nature cannot miss, says the poet, and they listen to the dictum. To them, composition, light, shade, form and texture are so many catch phrases…,
It was only slight apt in that post, now it is perfect. Of course it was about dry plate photography, the new process that was rapidly replacing wet plate colloidal photography at the time. Roll film replaced it soon after as the new “too easy” format, and years later 35mm (and a number of other smaller formats at the time) replaced roll film as the film of choice for the amateur. Every step of the way, users of the previous formats looked on in disdain at the newer formats and their users. If it wasn’t “destroying photography”, that was only because it “wasn’t actual photography”. Every step of the way, taking a photo became just a little bit easier, a whole lot cheaper, and even more accessible to the average person. A fact that irks the established photographers who feel they had to learn things the hard way while these newcomers don’t even try to learn at all. It is of course understandable; seeing people doing something you love with so little actual knowledge hurts, in any field of study.
I don’t think that this actually hurts photography. Sure the percentage of people out there, snapping away happily, never knowing what aperture or f-stop means, has grown exponentially in the last few years; but I think that the number of truly good photographers is growing rapidly as well. Photography is more than just knowing the technical details of your camera and how it works, a lot of it requires an eye that can see the image before it is taken; something that isn’t easy to learn. I believe there are many people out there these days taking amazing photos, who would have never even tried 10 years back. They have the eye, the artistic ability; they just don’t have the ability (or desire) to learn all the technical details.
I’m a technical person, while I had learnt on old camera’s a child, I’d spent a long enough time away from photography to have forgotten pretty much everything. When I got back into photography I immediately went digital. Since I am technical by nature, I immediately set out to learn every technical detail of taking a photo; f-stops, aperture, ISO, shutter speed, etc. Within a very short period of time I knew exactly what I needed to do, to gain a certain effect; and yet, in my opinion, most of my photos still lack something. My ability to see a shot, envision it as a print up on the wall, was and is still limited. I’ll learn and develop (I hope), over time, and I’ll have fun doing it; if I had started photography 50 years ago, it would be the same, if slightly slower. However for the technically inept (no matter how good an eye they might have had), learning photography, until recently, must have been a truly daunting task. Now they can continue to take photos and learn, slowly, over time. At least now they have a chance to produce something beautiful.
