New camera technologies are coming at us all the time. These new technologies are taking over the image making process. Technology, that gives anyone the ability to take a bad photograph and using the new technology, make that image a decent image.
The latest one that caught my eye was this box camera that can focus an image even though the photographer didn't focus the subject properly. It got me thinking about learning the craft of photography, reading and looking at the masters of the craft and being inspired to create your own personal images.
I learned photography from the bottom up. Taking darkroom classes in black and white, rolling our own film and developing the film and printing the negatives. We learned about exposure and contrast and how you could underexpose and overexpose your film by varying your times in the developer. This worked well if you had a very contrasty scene and needed to back off from the deep shadows and bright highlights. You simple wouldn't develop the film as long.
We learned the Zone System created by Ansel Adams. The meter averaged everything to an 18% gray, therefore if you were shooting a subject that was bright you would have to adjust your exposure so those bright areas of your image didn't get dark and muddy looking. To bring up those highlights that you saw through your lens you would have to overexpose the negative/slide but not so far as to lose the highlight detail.
We learned the camera controls before everything went Auto mode. It was Eye/Hand coordination as you photographed fast paced action subjects. You practiced which way you should turn the lens depending on whether the subject was moving away from you or toward you. You used a tripod and set up your composition carefully and deliberately. We learned composition and lighting. We learned the business side of making pictures and then selling them to make a good living.
Now cameras are getting to the point where they can virtually take a picture for you without you being present in the scene and aware of your composition and exposure. The mantra now is take the photo and enhance it after the fact. You can correct exposure by new HD merge technology. You can photoshop out any detail you shouldn't have included in the frame. If you didn't like the color you can filter it to be anything you like.
Everyone is a photographer nowadays and they proliferate the internet with subjects of internal revelations, as if they are showing the world an important event, a plate of eaten vegetables. When everything is important then nothing is and we see the minutia of daily life, the mundane details of our existence raised to the level of significance that lowers our expectations of what quality subjects should be.
But there still is a way of seeing that is unique to you, and finding that vision only expands your ability and willingness to learn and grow as a photographer and as a person. It has nothing to do with technology, but your inner landscape being manifested.
Once you learn the craft of photography, then you can break the rules and use these emerging technologies to your advantage, not letting the technology use you. Adding new techniques that enhance your style and helps you express your vision is a good thing, and the new software out there can do that, but you have to be careful and not let this new technology interfere with the meaning behind your images. Special effects for its own sake usually leads to a shallow perception of the photographs you are making.
Look at new technologies in the film industry and the special effects they can do now. The book series by J.R.R. Tolkein "Lord of the Rings" was great, but to bring it to the big screen, as Peter Jackson did, took time for technology to catch up with the human imagination. Same with photography. Learn your craft and then use these emerging technologies to enhance your imagination and make authentic images and not bland, sterile, automated, assembly line copycat images.
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