At 02:17 PM 10/29/2005, William Robb wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "graywolf"
Subject: Re: Sent My Brother to the Dark Side
Yeh! I am wondering if anyone else has noticed that most of the
anti-Pentax posts seem to be from people who also say that you don''t
need to waste all that time learning the skills of photography. Maybe
they believe that a newer camera will make up for lack of skill?
Not skill, per se, but the newer cameras can make up for an alarming lack
of knowledge of the science of photography.
William Robb
I largely agree, but I thought I would mention that I've heard top-level
photographers making statements about what they perceive as the decline in
photographers learning the details of their craft since 1979. It's not just
digital that spurred comments like this. When automatic exposure first
became a common feature in SLRs, there were pros lamenting the fact that
too many people depended too heavily on the feature. When autofocus became
widespread, the pros once again lamented the dependence of many people on
autofocus. Resin-based printing papers were also scorned, because many
people weren't learning about archival stability issues, and didn't know
how to make a lasting B&W print.
I suspect there were similar complaints with every technological
breakthrough that has ever happened in photography. I suspect that some
members of every generation have lamented what they perceive as the
deterioration in skills of the next generation of photographers. Heck, I
can remember people who shot only with view cameras crying about people
with SLRs not taking enough time with their photography to capture truly
breathtaking images. The view camera people naturally take more time to set
up a shot, and many of them see this as a huge advantage. They saw the
convenience of the SLR as something which encouraged people to shoot too
quickly, often wasting tons of film, and never developing a selective and
precise photographic vision as a consequence.
The perception of deteriorating skills has been with us for a LONG time. If
it makes you feel any better, whenever some new technological advance
obsoletes or minimizes the importance of one set of skills, it usually also
creates new opportunities and nurtures other types of skills to develop.
For instance, modern digital SLRs COULD make a person lazy and overly
reliant on automated features. However, the very short cycle of taking a
picture and then instantly reviewing the results (as opposed to waiting for
prints to come back from the lab) could greatly accelerate the growth of a
person's photographic skills, quite possibly pushing them to a higher level
of competency than they would have otherwise achieved. Digital also
encourages you to shoot more. This can be a good thing if the photographer
is shooting intelligently. All those extra exposures are a lot of extra
practice, and can really hone a person's craft. (That is, if they are
intelligently involved in the whole process and really want to learn.)
So, don't be too despondent. While this sort of lamentation has been
happening for ages, there are still great photographers taking great
images. Some of the excellent images you see today wouldn't even be
possible without some of the technological advances that so many people
have scorned over the years.
When one door closes, another opens...
take care,
Glen
