Digital Photography Art

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Is digital photography art?

I happen to love the method of creating art, and most digital photograpy seems to just not have it for me. A darkroom, chemicals, and a long strip of 35mm is what I want.

But I want to hear both sides. Give me your best arguement. Is digital photgraphy art? Is it a means to an end? Did it kill film? Is there any other way to do photographic art these days?

And if you side with me: what makes standard photography so special anyway? By the time it reaches product stage, what does it do that digital photography can't?

Have you embraced every painting you have ever seen? Every sculpture, opera, concerto? Just because a medium does not appeal to you does not make it any less of an artform.

If elephant crap and dead pigs qualify as art, why the heck not digital photography? Because the image can be manipulated with Photoshop after it’s taken? It still has to be taken in the first place. You can’t turn a photo of your bedroom wall into the Eiffel Tower at sunset. (But you can put the Eiffel Tower at sunset onto a photo of your bedroom wall if you’re creative enough.)

Have you ever seen the time and effort artists put into their Photoshop creations, transforming a handful of pixels into a representation of their vision? Does it mean less because they don’t come out stinking of chemicals?

Have you ever seen the artist whose computer just hiccuped, two hours into a project? Is it any less agonising than spilling your chemicals or having mom open the door at just that crucial moment and ruin your prints?

But none of that is relevant.
To decry any method or medium as capable of producing art is to totally fail to recognise that art is created by the human artist, influenced by the world around him, and freely expressing his thoughts, feelings, passions, ideas, vision.

Art is not created by the camera or the paintbrush or the cleaver. Art is created by man. The tools are just tools. The same piece of wood may be a walking stick or a crutch.

Did photography kill paints and brushes?

Did paints and brushes kill charred sticks and crushed berries?

Olympus PEN E-P2 12.3 MP Micro Four Thirds Interchangeable Lens Digital Camera


digital photography art5
digital photography art5
digital photography art5

Digital Photography Art

1

Digital Photography and the Portrait Studio

If you have had any experience in the past with a portrait studio, you know how long the process used to be. Once you went to the studio, it took about a week or so before the proofs were ready for you to view. You had to make a second trip to the studio to view those proofs and choose the ones you wanted to include in your package. From there it was another one to two weeks before you would have the portraits in your hand—if you were having holiday pictures done, it could be as long as a month to six weeks from the time you had the portraits taken to the time they were in your hands.

The introduction of digital photography made obtaining portraits quicker and easier. Instead of having to wait for proofs to arrive before a customer could choose the package they wanted, it was just a matter of minutes. In some studios the photographer took the picture and someone else uploaded the pictures to the computer where the customer could choose the package they wanted at the same time the portraits were taken. Instead of taking one to two weeks for your package to arrive, in some cases it would only take a week since the only processing was to print the pictures the customer wanted right from the computer. Certainly, they would need sorting and placed on the photo paper correctly. However, this process is much quicker than having to process them using the darkroom and chemical solutions that were part of film processing.

Don’t expect because it takes less time to process your order for portraits that any cost savings will be included with the package. In fact, digital photography has had no affect on the cost of portrait packages—the costs have increased just as much as they did during the time when professional photography included more expensive equipment and more processing time. In fact this has been the case in all areas of photography and not just the professional portrait studio. One only needs to look at how much school pictures have gone up in price to understand how little impact digital photography has had on prices. After all, in spite of the lower cost of digital photograph processing, there have been substantial increases in overhead costs for the professional portrait studio.

About the Author

Deniece Mize wrote the Article “Digital Photography and the Portrait Studio” and recommends you visit http://www.freeinformation4you.com for more information Digital Photography

Digital Photography Art by Amanda Ferguson Part 3


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digital photography art5