Reply To: The state of the industry in the digital age

[Brownie]

I highly doubt  most ‘world-renowned master photographers’ change equipment as often as you imply they do.  Photographers of that caliber still are highly devoted to shooting film, now where they go from there is open, (scanning for inkjet prints, old school c-prints, dye transfer, etc etc) I personally think digital photography has made us (along with several other factors) so rabid for new equipment. I highly doubt if Garry Winogrand was alive he would upgrade Leicas every year.  I shot with a digital canon rebel for four years, and I understood that camera tremendously well and I used it for everything  and it still can produce nice photographs, but when I upgraded, I wanted to go for something that was full-frame, and would be fairly accurate to a film camera.  Which is funny, on account of the technology hasn’t advanced enough for digital to overtake film in quality, at least an affordable one.

At university, all of the photography classes (except for digital, of course) are analog.  Education should be priority number one. I cannot stress how important knowing the technical aspects, conceptual design aspects, and being knowledgeable about the world or photography in the areas that they are interested in.

It truly boggles my mind when students at other colleges have no influences outside of the department. It’s ignorant to not look at the greats that have come before you. You have to figure out what made these photographers so great…was it the lighting? maybe. Was it the composition? Sure, yeah. Was it all of these elements with a strong conceptual idea that the viewer can relate to? Bingoo.
Where digital photography shines is in news photography. being able to almost instantly access the images on the card completely trumps developing negatives and cropping those down. Anything that needs to be fast or is time sensitive is effected greatly by digital photography. Also in shooting sporting events, I hardly doubt there’s a photographer out there that carries at least 10 rolls of film for the game. I think that is a true convenience of digital.

I just realized how old this message was…so I guess I’ll stop writing…