About sums it up
Posted by kozmikfish on June 7, 2008
I used to be a photographer but I guess I have now pretty much turned away from that medium of expression. Why?
Well, because I, personally, do not think that a “Photographer” exists any more. That is not a good thing.
It is not a bad thing. It is just progress.
yesbuts said
So a “Photographer” doesn’t exist anymore.
Lets have some details to support your prognoses.
In the meantime I’ll keep posting photographs on my blog, to prove photography is alive and well and flourishing.
coolynooly69 said
Thanks for your comment. Well, I have worked in various capacities within photography for fifteen odd years and have a website that features my work http://www.2rightfeet.com which, hopefully, indicates that I have some knowledge of photographic process. My feeling is that the process has changed: Much is achieved after the image has been “photographed” rather than in the moments leading up to it. If you look at chemical based photography then aperture selection, exposure, lens choice, film stock choice and processing decisions, etc, were the creative factors and it could be argued that more skill was required as it was a predictive process rather than the adaptive process undertaken in digital manipulation of imagery. There were always post-shutter techniques and darkroom skills that could enhance or alter the information captured by the camera but that has become almost the sole part of the creative process if digital photography is considered to now be the norm.
As I said, good or bad…it is just progress, but are the majority of photographers really drawing with light or just becoming skilled at post-production image manipulation. I am not some mad Luddite claiming digital technology is the work of the devil, I went from partially digital to fully digital over the last few years and though reasonably skilled and experimental in the darkroom I was never a big fan of the smell of the chemicals and all the cleaning that went with it.