It is curious how sometimes either you are so glad with your own learning path that you are terrified with the possibility that it have been different or else, you admire so much someone elese’s knowledge that you anguish yourself for experiences you hadn’t.
Like many other people, I had felt both those feelings before and I am sure I will again.
I think this is much the feeling on this post about digital photography and the learning oportunities being missed by the lack of obstacles, now overcame, of traditional photography (like film prices and a long developping process).
I migh identify myself with the feeling, but I do not share the mixed feelings about technology he describes, at least not from the creative point of view nor the learning experience.
It is true that we see far more garbage today that we did on the past. Loads and loads of uninteresting pictures featured all over the web.
However, I also never saw so many good pictures and so often in my entire life. Ten years ago, you could see great photography on expensive books or the National Geographic magazine, but, unless you were among a group of serious photographers, hardly ever you’d find great artistic work among your friends, neighbors and family.
If you browse a little bit through flickr for instance, you can see some great work there. There is a lot of talent being exposed in flickr. Side by side with a lot of garbage, is true, but it wasn’t much different in the past, just the volume of pictures was smaller.
I think that limitations imposed by the price of buying and developping film in the past are certainly motivational to some. To others is just a turn off.
But is an illusion to think that just because we have almost endless storage and electricity to take pictures we have no limits and boundaries to being pushed these days. I think that we must absorve what we have available, find the limits and go for new challenges.
As it is possible to point out that people who have never valued a roll of film have a worse background, you may as well say the same of people who had never the experience of using wet plates to take photos like the early years of photography, which could have been a great source of knowledge.
I think most of us, even the older ones, never used wet plates, and I can say that no one’s photography skills are impaired because of this.
Much on the contrary, I think the important thing to know here is that, no matter how proud we are of one’s knowledge and learning path our how much we envy other one’s, there are many valid ways of learning things and is useless to want the same learning process for everyone.
I am much in favor of digital photography, no restrictions about that. If in the past, the cicle of shooting with film forced the photographer to value each and any shot, it also prevented a lot of people from experimentation.
If these days everyone can take a couple hundreds of pictures in a day and learn from this, that is for the better. The possibility exists that a single picture is less precious to the photographer, but that has nothing to do with the process, but with the culture surrounding him/her.
Probably, this is the people who wouldn’t be taking pictures at all ten years ago. And, by the way, it doesn’t seems to me that there is anything wrong about not being in love with photography as well.
