There seems to be a ground swell of opinion that devalues a photograph purely by the means with which it was created. I find this difficult to relate to (maybe because I’m a photographer) but it does make you think. The argument seems to be that with the advent of digital photography, the number of people with good digital cameras and Photoshop (or PS Elements) that anyone can produce a good photograph. Furthermore, with Photoshop or like tools it seems to be the impression that good photographs can be “created” artificially rather than taken. You’d be amazed the number of times I show people a picture and they ask “is it real?” or “are the colors real?”. My answer is always yes, but I can’t help get a sinking feeling every time I’m asked.
This distrust of digital photography has stemmed from hoaxes or websites that superimpose bodies on heads and the like but it seems to make people distrust almost everything they see as potentially fake. Its a similar phenomenon to the general distrust of the web that many people have as identities have been stolen and people have been conned out of money. In reality, buying on the web is much more secure than buying in a store but that is not the general opinion of most.
In my opinion, I think people are missing the point. The reason we have photographic imagery (in a non-commercial sense) is that we enjoy looking as pictures. We buy pictures, we have desktop pictures, we have pictures on our phones and most of us have pictures that we would term as art hanging on our walls at home. Whether it was produced using film or digital technology shouldn’t matter. It is our enjoyment that we get from looking at it or the thoughts that it provokes that creates the value you perceive. Digital printing is actually more expensive than traditional photographic printing so it has nothing to do with materials.
So the next time a good photograph catches your eye, just look at it, enjoy it and consider that the photographer’s skill is not in the camera or in the computer – it’s in his head and that’s what separates a good photographer from an average one. The rules of photography are the same in digital. Light travels through the lens the same way and focus and depth of field as well as composition are just as important as they always have been.
Good photographs are taken by good photographers regardless of the tools used and that takes years of mastery and devotion to craft. Let me know what you think.
