Everything is Different…Yet Nothing Has Changed

By George D. Lepp

I keep hearing that everything has changed. Digital is killing traditional photography. Photography is on its way to hell in a hand basket. My question is what is “photography”, for that matter, what is “traditional photography”? The dictionary says that photography is producing pictures with a camera. Another definition is using light to make pictures. Yes, the mechanics have changed, but the end result is the same as it’s always been. Nothing has changed when it comes to the fact that capturing an image of light is what it’s all about. You still have to compose the image, wait for the right light, expose properly, and look for quality in every aspect of the process, no matter which process. Traditional photography is using film, giving your unexposed film to a stranger, getting prints that never match your expectations, and storing your results on plastic sheets in a file cabinet or little boxes to never be seen again. I don’t miss “traditional photography”.

There has been a steeper learning curve as the equipment and technology of photography has included digital capture. In the beginning, only a few years ago, the equipment and results were rudimentary at best. Those of us that embraced digital early on knew it wasn’t ready for prime time, but we stayed with it knowing that it would get better. The end result was that we got valuable early experience and developed our techniques as the technology developed. Many other photographers scoffed at the digital direction and the inevitable. Other photographers continue to discredit digital and swear that they’ll never participate. Even those that eschew digital are involved in some way in the digital process. All of our work that ends up on the printed page goes through a digital production at the printing stage. Someone scans the film, brings it into the computer, and tweaks the image for color and sharpness to optimize it for the printing process. Why not be the one to do the optimization when it’s your image?

Ansel Adams, the Westons, and many other early black and white photographers insisted on doing their own processing and printing. One of the basic tenets of “traditional photography” was that the photographer did the processing and printing. I could make the argument that digital photography more closely resembles early photography than the form it has taken where we shoot transparency film and have no hand in the final vision other than projecting it or laying it on a light box. So today we can have almost complete control from capture to editing, to optimizing, to the final product, be it print, projection, or web. The result is the product of the photographer’s vision from start to finish. He or she can take all the credit or be responsible for its failure. Maybe that’s too much for some photographers to bear.

Ansel Adams made the observation that the negative was the score and the print was the performance. We have that chance again. Digital gives us the opportunity to take control of our image and be involved with the process from capture to the finished print. If Ansel were alive today he’d definitely embrace the digital process to optimize his vision and his print. Note that I use the word “optimize”. I keep hearing the word “manipulate” and it is a negative term that conjures up visions of photographers sneaking around and putting things into the captured image that weren’t ever there and having unfair advantage through unscrupulous methods. Hey, we can put anything we want into any image as has been done since the first caveman added an extra saber tooth tiger to his wall painting to make him look braver. We just call it a photo illustration, and we have every right to do that as long as it isn’t misconstrued as fact.

I want to conclude with the comment that even though the image is digital in nature, captured with sophisticated electronic equipment, and optimized in a computer, it is still the basis of visual art. The final result must be evaluated by human beings considering aesthetic values based on human experience. All those sensors and hard drives are just tools…as were film and E-6 chemistry. Photography by the numbers will look just like painting by the numbers.

Digital photography can be new, different, and bewildering, but just remember that it’s all the same; the final picture needs to be a communicating piece of art that evokes an emotion or conveys information…and that hasn’t changed in more than 170 years.