Are we completely missing the boat with digital technology?

Bob Michaels

Bob Michaels

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My thinking is that most of us are living in the past as far as ignoring the opportunities available from current digital technology. We tend to use a digital M9 exactly the same as we do an M2 or a view camera. We think in terms of creating a singular image to hang on the wall, include in a publication, or show on a computer screen. Sure the capture medium is electronic instead of film but that is no big deal. It is less significant than the development of color film or availability of pre-sensitized glass plates. We have a century old presentation mindset that ignores the opportunities from using new technology.

There are exciting new presentation opportunities from digital technology. We no longer have to think about just a singular image or series of related images that the viewer moves through. Electronic viewing gives us the ability to show paced slide shows, include short video clips, and include the photographer’s narration, music, or words from the subject. Viewing on a computer or TV is no longer required. This can now be done with a simple digital photo frame.

Some are saying that technology is making the photographic process so simple that everyone can do it. Some realize that no camera can make a good photo. That is still up to the photographer. We must learn to grab and hold the viewers attention in a modern environment so they have time to absorb our message.

There will always be a place for the classic print on the wall or image in a print publication. But if our goal is to communicate information to the viewer, we must acknowledge their changed demands. Print media is declining. Electronic media is increasing in popularity. We must adapt our presentation methods to the new market.

Now I am still shooting film, not that it matters. And I am still hanging prints on gallery walls. But I am also developing electronic multimedia presentations both for exhibits and for my website.



Your thoughts?
 
Don't know about missing the boat - in the art photography arena at least, photography is being increasingly used within installations alongside other media (especially sound and video). Even Magnum photographers are doing this (e.g. Mark Power's Black Country project).

A project I'll be starting soon mixes photography and smell - the latter arguably evoking memory more than sound does.
 
RichC said:
Don't know about missing the boat - in the art photography arena at least, photography is being increasingly used within installations alongside other media (especially sound and video). Even Magnum photographers are doing this (e.g. Mark Power's Black Country project).

A project I'll be starting soon mixes photography and smell - the latter arguably evoking memory more than sound does.
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That would be interesting. I worked on a project for the 1996 Olympics here in Atlanta to combine the five senses in a 24-hour slide presentation on huge monuments, buildings, towers, etc. :angel:
 
bob, i think you are dead on. the editing digital process is not simpler (doing it well is more complex, i think), but the process of making a well-exposed, sharp photo is much easier with digital kit. content with soul? ah, still up to the shooter ...
 
i make a point to carry either my x100 OR a film camera. with the x100, no matter how hard a i try, i cannot help but add the possibility of color to the light equation. with a cam loaded with BW, it is the light alone (the subject really is secondary). i do not think this will change unless i go completely digital, or almost so ...
 
As a media consumer, I strongly prefer single, stand alone images and text.

It is less time comsuming to browse and find interesting material, easier to search for, etc. The trend of videos on news sites drives me crazy - I ignore all links that don't include text for the story.

This basically killed my interest in producing multimedia oriented work myself. That may make me antiquated but I have no interest in pursuing areas I am not interested in consuming in the first place.
 
Anyone who thinks this has anything to do with cameras, in any way: Please accept my apologies for not being able to communicate my thoughts to you.
 
Not completely missing the boat altogether but I'm doing my best ... photography combined with odorography, interesting ... I wonder how Ansel Adams stuff would have smelled ... :thinking-smilie:
 
The great thing about new digicams is the video. Many times I've thought while plodding about looking for photos is that short videos might have more impact. Nothing actually has to happen in a video, just like a photo, but the effect is quite different. Or could be different- lots to mull over.
 
Sparrow said:
Not completely missing the boat altogether but I'm doing my best ... photography combined with odorography, interesting ... I wonder how Ansel Adams stuff would have smelled ... :thinking-smilie:
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Hi Stewart! :)

I'm researching the "right" smell at the moment (helps being a chemist!). The project will be on the English post-war middle-class suburbs: 1930s semis with immaculate gardens... I was brought up in such an area, and I still recall their stifling conservative claustrophobia, offset by their feeling of safety, home and family; this duality leaves me ambiguous ... And there are certain smells that strongly evoke the suburbs for me.
 
bob, i mentioned film/digital cams as a way of illustrating my personal relationships with them as a photographer. we film fans certainly could miss the boat as visual communicators if we ignore digital. we ignore it at or own peril. i like to imagine the day when galleries hang ultra-flat 11x16 monitors rather than framed prints. so easy to put up new stuff - or old stuff that has been digitally copied.
as for video, i am like brian as a reader/consumer: i want to read straight news, not watch it. there is so much more information and analysis in a written article than a videoed one of the same length ...
 
Challenging post Bob.

Some of the impact from an art work comes from the context that the medium itself provides. As Paul points out, b&w forces the emphasis to be on light, and to me the subject is moved out of conventional reality. When I see a video presentation, my reaction is to see it as a TV show, more like a hyper-reality (and maybe a little cheap)

That said , I have seen wonderful stuff from animation artists, including clever use of photographs.

Randy
 
can a photo on a monitor be only about the light/image?

or does the monitor itself always change the way a photo (whether it started out on film, BW or color, or as digital) is viewed/interpreted?
 
Bob, I think you're right to point out that new technology invites, almost requires really, new thinking to exploit its artist and communications possibilities. You observation about multimedia exhibits points the way that this is going.

An artist friend, Robert Whitman, had an installation at the Guggenheim a few years ago (it was added to the museum's permanent collection) that was entirely composed of camera phone videos projected all around the the main floor of the museum. It was totally mesmerizing.

The two Bobs (Whitman and Michaels) are onto something here. New technology ought to encourage at its best new ways of seeing and showing. Interestingly, Bob Whitman was a founding member of EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology) along with our late friend Billy Kluver and Billy's Bell Labs colleague, Fred Waldhauer, and Bob Rauschenberg (another Bob! must be something about that name Robert. Apparently, I don't share that gene. Too bad.). They were exploring as early as 1966 new ways of incorporating burgeoning technologies in the service of art. Kluver helped Jean Tinguely create "Homage to New York," a machine that destroyed itself a part of art exhibit.
 
We all want to define or at least guess at what things mean, especially in the arts. I was at a Bob Whitman performance piece where he took questions after the performance from the audience. Some of the guests expected -- really almost demanded -- that the piece have a meaning that could be distilled into a one or two sentence blurb from the artist. One fellow in particular kept badgering Bob for an answer, "what does it mean." Bob didn't yield saying, [paraphrasing here] "the meaning comes from what you see or interpret, not from something I tell you." I think that answer can apply here, too. What medium any of us choose to use to express and exhibit images may or may not mean anything. I see art as an exploration, not an endpoint. And, I'm beginning to realize in my own work that as it unfolds it is telling me what it means. The cart is pushing my horse. And, for me, that makes the process can fun as it reveals itself to me. Patterns begin to emerge that were quite unintended.
 
Bob Michaels said:
My thinking is that most of us are living in the past as far as ignoring the opportunities available from current digital technology. We tend to use a digital M9 exactly the same as we do an M2 or a view camera. We think in terms of creating a singular image to hang on the wall, include in a publication, or show on a computer screen. Sure the capture medium is electronic instead of film but that is no big deal. It is less significant than the development of color film or availability of pre-sensitized glass plates. We have a century old presentation mindset that ignores the opportunities from using new technology.

There are exciting new presentation opportunities from digital technology. We no longer have to think about just a singular image or series of related images that the viewer moves through. Electronic viewing gives us the ability to show paced slide shows, include short video clips, and include the photographer’s narration, music, or words from the subject. Viewing on a computer or TV is no longer required. This can now be done with a simple digital photo frame.

Some are saying that technology is making the photographic process so simple that everyone can do it. Some realize that no camera can make a good photo. That is still up to the photographer. We must learn to grab and hold the viewers attention in a modern environment so they have time to absorb our message.

There will always be a place for the classic print on the wall or image in a print publication. But if our goal is to communicate information to the viewer, we must acknowledge their changed demands. Print media is declining. Electronic media is increasing in popularity. We must adapt our presentation methods to the new market.

Now I am still shooting film, not that it matters. And I am still hanging prints on gallery walls. But I am also developing electronic multimedia presentations both for exhibits and for my website.



Your thoughts?
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But multimedia presentations aren't really new, though, are they? Maybe on websites but in exhibits? Photographers have been able to do slide shows and record audio to go along with it for ages. The fact that both the projector and audio recorder are digital devices doesn't fundamentally change the experience. And while this multimedia experience can be interesting in an exhibit, I have to agree with a previous poster who has mentioned the shortened attention span people have nowadays. I never look at photo slideshows because they make me impatient. Maybe I have ADD :)

I also don't think flatscreen tvs as displays are anything excitingly new. If you go through a Julian Opie exhibit (which isn't photography) the fact that you're looking at digital screens isn't really mindblowing. Even the allusion to advertising is not much more than a cliché.
And looking at a photograph coming from a light emitting source in an exhibition context is not all that radical considering that Jeff Wall has been doing it masterfully for the past thirty years (although I think he's gotten away from it in the last 10).

Digital technology definitely has changed and will further change the way we relate to photography. But just turning to new technological devices doesn't necessarily make the outcome new. Of course, if you look at the work of past decades you can see that the evolution of photography has been very closely linked to that of technology. But whenever something exciting happened in this regard it was because a photographer found a solution in new technology to a problem he had. It wasn't photographers who just used new technology for the sake of newness.


In the end I think we will only fully comprehend in the future how exactly digital technology has changed our view of photography and we will then find the work of photographers whose work exhibits traces of that change.
 
I'm combining still photography with digital videa for "documentary photography" projects. The photographs are "developed and printed" in LR and then are moved into an "event" in Final Cut Pro where they are animated and set within film footage or simply presented as a photo essay vis animation. They are outputted as Quicktime videos that can be screened publically or posted to the web for public viewing on sites like Vimeo or on a project dedicated site.

Obviously, you can set the final selection of photos to narration and or music and can add text.

In my experience, this is the way that documentary photography is going. You arent tied to a gallery space and the limited audience that entails.
 
RichC said:
Hi Stewart! :)

I'm researching the "right" smell at the moment (helps being a chemist!). The project will be on the English post-war middle-class suburbs: 1930s semis with immaculate gardens... I was brought up in such an area, and I still recall their stifling conservative claustrophobia, offset by their feeling of safety, home and family; this duality leaves me ambiguous ... And there are certain smells that strongly evoke the suburbs for me.
Click to expand...

That was my early experience too, Proust's madeleine cake dipped in tea was the sound of a manual lawnmower and smell of cut-grass for me ... the old manual lawnmowers are so much better than these new-fangled digital things.
 
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