When digital first emerged, for years I thought it was a wonderful addition to film, giving greater scope and possibilities of image manipulation and artistic realisation. Then sometime around 2002 it suddenly seemed to be high jacked by marketing people to the exclusion of film. Would others agree?
Commercialism rules over art in terms of volume and activity in most places at most times. Pictures showing what things look like are universally powerful in attracting attention, modifying thought, and maybe turning a dollar. People have always wanted pictures but getting them was difficult.
In the old days there were only paintings. Paintings were slow to produce, skill intensive, and expensive. People didn't really want paintings, they wanted pictures, but paintings were all that was available.
The invention of photography changed that. Commerce ditched paintings and adopted photographs. But photographs were still somewhat effortful to produce and still cost money. Again, pictures was what was desired and photographs were the least nasty form available at the time. Digital picture-making is now more facile and cheaper than photography and it is currently the preferred choice for generating pictures. Unfortunately digital still takes some work so it in turn will be superceded by an easier cheaper way of getting pictures into people's heads. Maybe that will be by WiFi brain implants or telepathy.
The old media of painting, photography, and digital will continue but not as a way of showing what bits of the external world look like. Rather they will serve as a vehicle for transferring the state of mind of a creative artist to the mind of a receptive viewer; art not commerce.
Commercialism rules over art in terms of volume and activity in most places at most times. Pictures showing what things look like are universally powerful in attracting attention, modifying thought, and maybe turning a dollar. People have always wanted pictures but getting them was difficult.
In the old days there were only paintings. Paintings were slow to produce, skill intensive, and expensive. People didn't really want paintings, they wanted pictures, but paintings were all that was available.
The invention of photography changed that. Commerce ditched paintings and adopted photographs. But photographs were still somewhat effortful to produce and still cost money. Again, pictures was what was desired and photographs were the least nasty form available at the time. Digital picture-making is now more facile and cheaper than photography and it is currently the preferred choice for generating pictures. Unfortunately digital still takes some work so it in turn will be superceded by an easier cheaper way of getting pictures into people's heads. Maybe that will be by WiFi brain implants or telepathy.
The old media of painting, photography, and digital will continue but not as a way of showing what bits of the external world look like. Rather they will serve as a vehicle for transferring the state of mind of a creative artist to the mind of a receptive viewer; art not commerce.
...analog photography is becoming a fine art medium like etching.
Not quite yet. Before that, I'm thinking expensive, irksome, and in some instances not worth the trouble.
Why again are you a member of this here forum? The only thing irksome in the discussion were your replies.
Gee, I guess movable type just set us all on the road to ruin.
When digital first emerged, for years I thought it was a wonderful addition to film, giving greater scope and possibilities of image manipulation and artistic realisation. Then sometime around 2002 it suddenly seemed to be high jacked by marketing people to the exclusion of film. Would others agree?
I disagree, the function of marketing is to create demand for products which the public didn't previously know existed in many cases, and also make them so dissatisfied with perfectly good products they already own to want to "update" them to keeps the wheels of industry turning.These marketeers are only giving us what we want...
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2002 brought us the affordable DSLR as one more change. They were affordable because they were meant to be built in large quantities and had to be marketed as such.
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BTW, commercialism isn't a bad thing. It is the underlaying reason for inventing new technologies, and improving older technologoies too.
I don't think it's quite that simple. I think there are people who are, by nature, inventors. They like creating "better mousetraps". There are also people who like to find ways to make money.
Probably the best business partnerships are when the two get together. Apple in the early days is a perfect example. Woz was the inventor and Jobs the marketer.
When we have people who ONLY are in it for the money we get an form of rampant capitalism, much like we have now, where marketeers CREATE a demand and the products may often be junk. These are the products that leave a bad taste in people's mouths because they know they have been burned.
So what we have then is too many marketeers and not enough inventors.
How this can relate to photography is that we end up with too much whiz bang and not enough real art. Buying the newest toy doesn't necessarily make you better, just faster. If you're good, that's a good thing maybe, if you're lousy, you just churn out more crap, faster.
Outstanding analysis Maris!
A very apt observation! In the old days there was writing but what people really wanted was text. Writing was a slow, vulnerable to error, and expensive way of getting text. The scriptoria of the dark and middle ages were the intellectual sweat-shops of their era. Moveable type enabled printing and the industrial scale production of cheap error-free text.
Which answers why the big camera makers were so fond of digital technology: why would they sell you a camera once in ten years and then watch you hand over your money to Kodak, Fuji and Ilford from then on if they could sell you a new camera every few years, which means all your photo money goes to them? Combine this with the "old camera == bad camera" meme and there's a lot of money to be made. And let's face it: that is what marketing is for.In other words if it isnt the latest thing, its inferior. It annoys me that camera functions are given more emphasis than seeing.
I don't think it's quite that simple. I think there are people who are, by nature, inventors. They like creating "better mousetraps". There are also people who like to find ways to make money.
Probably the best business partnerships are when the two get together. Apple in the early days is a perfect example. Woz was the inventor and Jobs the marketer.
(snip)
Other comments I get are I found an old camera; do you think it will work? In other words if it isnt the latest thing, its inferior.
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