An all digital world?

johnwolf said:
How about "Photography: General Interest"? It's not really a project or exhibition. And that forum is widely viewed. Why don't you start it? I'm a lightweight around here. We can share images we've printed, papers, processes, storage, successes, failures -- anything related to this initiative that helps and inspires.
Click to expand...

Sounds good. I have to work out how I'm going to manage it before I start something ... But I will. :)

G
 
Before digital I yearned to be able to produce a book of photographs, carefully selected, intelligently sequenced and well presented. A picture book that would be like the picture books I treasured of the greats. Now we can all do that and digital media has afforded us the opportunity.
My aim for 2015 is to have my best 1000 slides professionally scanned and to embody the best of them in such a book. As a second stage I will begin printing the best 100 or so B&W pictures that I have managed to produce over the years and do the same. My kids can have cd's of these as well as the books as they feature in many of them or they were there at the time they were taken.
It is all still wonderful.
 
When I'm editing a series I mount prints on large pieces of inexpensive foam core boards using thumb tacks. I start with 4 X 6s and after the first edit I order 6 X9 prints complete the editing and establish sequencing.

I walk past these prints all the time and it helps me to view them at different times of the day and when I'm in different moods.

The initial sharp decline in commercial use (advertising) of print media has ended. Further decline will be slow, but steady. Many of my clients who relied on print media four or five years ago now only use digital media.

I visit a large number of homes for my commercial work. The number of non-family photographs on display is higher than many might guess.
 
Print media is in dire straits and won't be returning to where it was; there will likely always be a niche but it won't drive the market. Art photography will always be printed, why? Capitalism: value is derived in part from scarcity, and physicality is an assurance of limitation unlike in the digital world where everything can be reproduced any number of times without degradation or significant cost. While you can reprint a negative any number of times, there is still an assurance of limitation with editions, signings and so on, and a print can only be made from a print with some degree of degradation.

There is already valuable art photography that is not printed and instead displayed on screens, likewise with digital video art, but often the screen itself is "part" of the artwork and is similarly works as an assurance of limitations. In a way this is it's own kind of print, a digital lightbox of sorts.

Putting it briefly, people only pay for pure data when it has a utility towards a particular purpose, for instance stock photography. Art photography, where exclusivity of acquisition is important derives value from how easily the photograph can be acquired, and so it'll definitely be that physical prints will continue to be mainstream.
 
I print. 35 mm film scanned and printed digitally.

For my feeling, a print on screen is not final.

But I am also not young any more.....
 
After literally years thinking about it I bought an Epson 3880 a couple of weeks ago. To hold in your hand a carefully developed digital file as a physical print on good photographic paper is worth the effort. I can't go back and my whole approach will change now: the print is the thing.
 
Here’s an unpleasant thought. What happens to your digital files when you die? Wherever they are, cloud, disc, whatever, they are probably not immediately recognizable as photographs. A folder is a folder whether it contains old tax reports, old correspondence, old computer programs or old pictures. And it just may hit the digital trash basket without ever being recognized. At least, when it comes to a box of photographs, someone will know what they are throwing out (or maybe keeping).
 
It's the same with books. Will ebooks completely replace physical books? That has a better chance of happening than screen only art because there will always be photographers/artists who will want the physical artifact/print.
 
Richard G said:
After literally years thinking about it I bought an Epson 3880 a couple of weeks ago. To hold in your hand a carefully developed digital file as a physical print on good photographic paper is worth the effort. I can't go back and my whole approach will change now: the print is the thing.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I just bought the little brother, the R3000. I can't wait!
 
when i die you can have my external hard drives...check the folder marked 'pictures'...

and enjoy all the music too!
 
Bill Pierce said:
Here’s an unpleasant thought. What happens to your digital files when you die? Wherever they are, cloud, disc, whatever, they are probably not immediately recognizable as photographs. A folder is a folder whether it contains old tax reports, old correspondence, old computer programs or old pictures. And it just may hit the digital trash basket without ever being recognized. At least, when it comes to a box of photographs, someone will know what they are throwing out (or maybe keeping).
Click to expand...


No question about that. Piles of negatives, boxes of slides are the same. If there's too much, out it goes. If you want to keep an image for 100 years, you have to print it. Digital backups aren't reliable even for the original user unless he's paranoid and obsessional. His descendants will find piles of old hard drives with non-compatible data interfaces, missing power cords etc. I tell my young colleagues who've just had children: print the photographs. Better still, get a film camera, learn how to use it and make slides twice a year. And even have some of them printed. A box of 50 best pictures might not go to the trash. Too much more might well do.
 
Don't know where the rest of the world is headed (well, yeh, I do :D ), but ....

Most of my pictures are family-sharing grade (personal web page), but they occassionally (5% ? ) get printed and framed and given away. People LOVE to get printed pictures in the mail, and they even handwrite and paper-mail back "thank you" notes :eek:

I print my "artistic" stuff and hang them anywhere I may, and sometimes I give away mounted, matted and bagged prints to the worthy few.

I don't understand people who knock "digital". It's a wonderful technology for sharing information, events, ideas and pictures now that friends are scatter all over the world.

What's the longevity of my digital archives ? .... that's a bad question. It should be "how many people will end up looking at your digital pictures compared to how many people will ever see a print of your pictures?". I'm guessing that ratio is 100:1 (maybe 1000:1)
 
Bill Pierce said:
What happens to your digital files when you die? Wherever they are, cloud, disc, whatever, they are probably not immediately recognizable as photographs. A folder is a folder whether it contains old tax reports, old correspondence, old computer programs or old pictures. And it just may hit the digital trash basket without ever being recognized. At least, when it comes to a box of photographs, someone will know what they are throwing out (or maybe keeping).
Click to expand...



...And this is where photographers with any justifiable interest in seeing their digitized work preserved should begin to think about proactive relationships with archival librarians in their communities and states (public libraries, state archives) or IHEs (community colleges, alma maters, nearest research or land grant university) where librarians are increasingly concerned with longterm preservation of digital collections. Libraries--especially research university libraries, and there's at least one of these in each of the 50 states--are repositories of history, literature, culture for public and scholarly research for the foreseeable future. And their librarians value, and take good care of, and routinely upgrade to current archival standards, all forms and formats of visual imagery depicting the lives we led, the deeds we did, the landscapes we preserved or razed. And those librarians often work with fine art/cultural history museums associated with the university or community.

Alternatively, I imagine a good collective initiative for photography clubs/groups would be to create, curate and maintain their own archival servers, with rational limits for individual storage, photographer biographies, protocols for metadata/labeling, and a plan for community/university library/museum donation if/when the group starts to die off.

In either case, I imagine the preservation cause, whether individual or communal, would gain added value to the extent that the photographers are willing to provide prints, captions/descriptions, metadata input/correction, etc. in an ongoing volunteer hands-on basis.

This is one of the things I'll be doing for my own sake in retirement, in any case--at one of my alma maters, or at one of the universities where I've worked teaching, publishing books and shooting photographs. I know how it's done, and whom to work with, and I'd be glad to participate in an ongoing rff thread about how to do it.
 
Last edited:
Bill Pierce said:
Here’s an unpleasant thought. What happens to your digital files when you die? Wherever they are, cloud, disc, whatever, they are probably not immediately recognizable as photographs. A folder is a folder whether it contains old tax reports, old correspondence, old computer programs or old pictures. And it just may hit the digital trash basket without ever being recognized. At least, when it comes to a box of photographs, someone will know what they are throwing out (or maybe keeping).
Click to expand...

If you are seeking some limited immortality for your photo work to the larger audience of the world, curate it into books, obtain ISBN numbers for it, and register the books with the Library of Congress. The work will be preserved and will be findable to those who care enough to look for it. The cost is reasonable and the LoC bears the burden of maintaining the archive as part of their public mandate.

For photos of family and friends: make prints and books, put them on the shelf and gift them to people who care. That's no change from the film world.

For the rest of your digital, virtual life: let it evaporate into the thin air where it will do no further harm. If I can't stick around to enjoy further living, why should it burden the rest of the world? :)

G
 
"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Only recently it seems that archivists have discovered that digital media also has quite limited lifespans (a CD around 8 years, a hard drive 20 or something). To summarise a paper I read on museum archiving, longevity is generally inversely proportional to how easily it's data can be replicated, a carved stone tablet will last thousands of years but it extremely difficult to reproduce, data on a hard drive is effortless to reproduce without degradation but will only be good to use for a few decades.

But for me I feel like the biggest issue with digital technology is actually getting RID of anything - completely deleting something that has been uploaded online is near impossible.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom