"Photography is film." - Ken Rockwell
When I first read that on his web site a few weeks ago I assumed he was trolling. But after the words rattled around a few weeks I began to see some solid logic to his declaration. He also likes to refer to negatives as "Real RAW."
Is digital capture simply too different in all important ways to be called "photography?" After all, there was no photography before the invention of the use of light sensitive emulsions on copper. So, the word ('light' and 'graphics') was adopted to describe these chemical processes of capturing light into a latent image. The digital process does yield similar practical results, but the basis is entirely different, for example, non-chemical. I notice that in the world of motion-pictures there are two terms in common use: "film making" and "videography." Granted, these are often misapplied.
In other forms of making pictures we have unique terms for each craft. Where painting is not the same a drawing, which is not the same as engraving or lithographing. A sensor and a piece of film certainly seem as different as a pencil and a paintbrush. Photoshop seems awfully different from a darkroom, in the way that scarping away linoleum seems different from slathering paint pigments on a piece of canvas.
What about the craft itself? There can be no doubt that creating an image from a digital tool is very different than with film. The skills of operating a computer with complicated software have little in common with mixing the soup in a darkroom.
Digitography?
In a modern hospital with half dozens ways of looking inside your body, they don't call them all "X-rays" just because the output is an image. We have MRI, PET, X-Ray and I'm sure others I don't know. We make new names for new processes because the tools and crafts are different.
The commonality of a "camera" is not enough. The camera obscura was used as an aid in painting well before photography. The chemical basis of one craft just isn't comparable to the software basis of another craft. AI is already beginning to overtake the digital camera systems, and before long, you will just send your drone off the porch with a list of subjects you'd like it to capture for you. Is that photography or computography?
When I first read that on his web site a few weeks ago I assumed he was trolling. But after the words rattled around a few weeks I began to see some solid logic to his declaration. He also likes to refer to negatives as "Real RAW."
Is digital capture simply too different in all important ways to be called "photography?" After all, there was no photography before the invention of the use of light sensitive emulsions on copper. So, the word ('light' and 'graphics') was adopted to describe these chemical processes of capturing light into a latent image. The digital process does yield similar practical results, but the basis is entirely different, for example, non-chemical. I notice that in the world of motion-pictures there are two terms in common use: "film making" and "videography." Granted, these are often misapplied.
In other forms of making pictures we have unique terms for each craft. Where painting is not the same a drawing, which is not the same as engraving or lithographing. A sensor and a piece of film certainly seem as different as a pencil and a paintbrush. Photoshop seems awfully different from a darkroom, in the way that scarping away linoleum seems different from slathering paint pigments on a piece of canvas.
What about the craft itself? There can be no doubt that creating an image from a digital tool is very different than with film. The skills of operating a computer with complicated software have little in common with mixing the soup in a darkroom.
Digitography?
In a modern hospital with half dozens ways of looking inside your body, they don't call them all "X-rays" just because the output is an image. We have MRI, PET, X-Ray and I'm sure others I don't know. We make new names for new processes because the tools and crafts are different.
The commonality of a "camera" is not enough. The camera obscura was used as an aid in painting well before photography. The chemical basis of one craft just isn't comparable to the software basis of another craft. AI is already beginning to overtake the digital camera systems, and before long, you will just send your drone off the porch with a list of subjects you'd like it to capture for you. Is that photography or computography?