"I’ve always thought digital photography is like socialism...It reduces everything to the same level.”

An irate David Bailey, quoted in the Telegraph this week.

John

Thanks for that. 

But at least he dislikes socialism.

The idea that photography tells the ‘truth’ is and always was a myth. It is just as selective as any other art form. What is going on just outside the frame? The photographer selects from reality and by selecting changes it. You do the same with your ‘thinifications’.

Typically the photographic image is seen as a direct description of reality not a representation of it. In practice of course the photographer has always selected from the world and the photographic image, defined as much by what is outside the frame as by what is included, is inevitably only an approximation of the real world it purports to capture.

From an statement I prepared for an exhibitrion recently.

...and photoshop work doesn’t have to be about photorealistic trickery either.

Agree wholeheartedly with Mr Bailey. My lament of ‘analogue’ photography is the extreme difficulty it now takes to get the amazing black and white contrast that was so effortless until the death of film. I used to own a professional Kodak/Canon stills camera which had an amazing photoshop plug-in for perfectly achieving that result, but sadly now more. Now I have to achieve this through a rather long-winded process of calculations and level adjustment in Photoshop ... I most strongly recommend Photoshop Channel Chops as a source of information of how to do this and lots of other effects you can do without the need to purchase expensive plugins.

Julian

Thanks as always.  I have rather few comments here, but the ones I get seem to be a very high quality.

It occurs to me that the basic problem you may have is not digital as such, but computer screens as they now are.  They don’t do total black anymore, because everything now involves varying amounts of light.

There are surely now many people, i.e. it’s not just me, who only display pictures on computer screens rather than paper - computer screens as they now are.  It’s only the art photographers and old fashioned types generally, who still love printing it out.

Maybe when the artificial paper screen, or whatever they call it, gets into its stride, which does not involve back lighting, only reflected light, as with marks on regular paper, digital will be asked again to do total black.  At which point it will surely oblige.

Brian,

A am not sure if you are referring to the problems of LCD screens specifically, but they are where the “black” problem is worst. Specifically, they are backlit.

What this means is that the LCD screen itself does not give off any light. How it works is that varying the voltage to a specific pixel alters the amount of light changes that section of the screen from transparent to opaque, or some degree in between. (Colour works by putting red, green, or blue filters over pixels after this). A white light is then shone on the screen from behind and the light that gets through is what you see.  The light is always there, and inevitably some of it always gets through.

There are other classes of display where are emissive rather than transmissive. What this means (essentially) is that there are tiny red, green and blue lights actually on the surface of the screen, and these are what actually emit the light. These can still have problems with blacks if “off” doesn’t quite mean “off”, (and if response times are slow) but the problem with blacks is not quite as inherent as it is for transmissive displays like LCD.

Plasma screens are emissive, but for other reasons don’t really work as computer screens. Something called OLED (organic light emitting diode) shows a lot of promise, and may in a few years give us screens with better blacks.

Digital photography has certainly opened up the field of “painting with light” to one and all.
I find myself, as I’m sure many others do to, taking a hundred images in the hope of getting one decent picture. The plan is to delete everything else as soon as I upload it at home (or wherever).

Does this happen? No. Now, rather than having hundreds of rubbish photographs clogging up my shelves, I have thousands of rubbish .jpg files clogging up my hard drives.

Digital photgraphy is rubbish. From that point of view, anyway.

The only thing I care about is results. Digital cameras make me more productive. If I now take ten times as many photos (as compared to what I did with film) in order to make twice as many good photos, that is a significant improvement. As for the thousands of photos that don’t make the metaphorical cut: hard drives are cheap, and the snap-edit-post/print process requires much less time and hassle on computers than it did in the darkroom.

The old technology is still available—cheaper than ever on eBay—for anyone who wants to use it. It has advantages, but for most of us the new way is on balance much better.

You god dem right! I use 400D and when see something like Mark - remember, that first - photograf, second - feeling, and third - there’s now third :) ust two simple thing

Photography is not dead is a very thought ful review. How the digital images and galleries can impact on photography? Great review by Brian Micklethwait. Keep posting.

I am not sure when digital photograph is growing like anything , why are saying that photography is dead?
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