New technologies always engender new jargons used to discuss them.
It's really that simple. Analogs of older concepts migrate to new terms
in order to help us differentiate what is what in the new technology,
in the context of our familiarity with what the things were in the
pre-existing, similar technology.
For instance, someone asked what POTS was earlier. POTS has been a
standard term in the telephony industry for 20 years or more, it was a
new term when the newer generation of telephony equipment started to
surface in order to distinguish between new equipment and old equipment.
"Processing in the darkroom" becomes "workflow" because you're not
working in a darkroom.
"Post processing" is significant because it's processing after either
the camera or you have massaged the sensor data into an RGB rendering
of an image.
"Image" is used rather than photograph both for brevity, and because
some of the things captured are not photographs.
"Capture" used rather than exposure ... why, I am not sure: they are
synonymous in this context.
Language is mutable, just like technology. Language adapts to life
and technology in order to allow us to comprehend their ever-changing
diversity.
Godfrey
On Mar 27, 2006, at 11:01 AM, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
Hi John,
Perhaps some people feel, as I do, that the buzzwords surrounding
digital
are annoying. For example, I did a lot of darkroom work for many
years.
Never once did I use the term "workflow." I just went into the
darkroom
and made some prints. Until recently, until the advent of digital,
people
made photos, they didn't "capture images." We'd look at
photographs, not
images. We'd look at negatives, not files. We'd go into the
darkroom,
crop, adjust, develop, dry, and mount or store the prints. We
didn't do
post processing.
I understand that this is something very subjective - a photograph
is an
image, but so is my reflection in the mirror. Why have we so
embraced the
term image, and what, over the years, will happen to photographs?
An image
is a more all encompassing term, a photograph is something specific.
Shel
[Original Message]
From: John Francis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Date: 3/27/2006 10:40:50 AM
Subject: Re: Bailing out.
What really puzzles me is that, from my perspective, all the labour
in the dark room was just as much a "work flow" as anything I do in
Photoshop, coupled with the additional disadvantage that I can't save
an intermediate result in the printing process, but have to repeat
each and every step for every single print I make. Not only that -
I have to commit myself 100% to the darkroom - I can't leave a print
in the developer to answer the phone, make a cup of tea, etc.
I can understand people who prefer the "hands on" chemical process,
and find the more detached digital process less enjoyable. But to
suggest that "workflow" itself is somehow a digital concept, and
that this is what is wrong with digital photography, seems strange.
Perhaps it comes down to the observation, made by others here, that
with film a lot of this went on "behind the scenes" at the lab, etc.,
while with digital most people are not prepared to pay for this
service
because they can save money by doing it themselves, and maybe didn't
realise just how much time and effort saving money was going to cost.
