Signs offering film
developing are rapidly
changing to signs
offering to make prints
from your digital files.
“From today, painting
is dead!” exclaimed
painter Paul Delaroche
when he saw the first
daguerreotype in 1839.
He was wrong, but can
we revise the sentence
to “From today, film is
dead!”

preFACe

PreFACe

N

ot long ago the course title “Digital Photography” implied a course

on Photoshop. As digital cameras have become increasingly

popular, the introductory course has also gone digital so you are

now introduced to photography using a digital camera. As this new

era of digital photography matures, it won’t be long before the “digital” in

“digital photography” becomes redundant. It will be assumed, because that

is the way almost all photography will be done. One of the primary reasons

for this rapid movement from film to digital imaging is that photography

is embedded in a world that has gone digital. To take full advantage of the

digital world in which we live, photographs also need to be digital. For awhile,

capturing images on film and then scanning them into a digital format was

a solution. However, this process is expensive and time consuming. Digital

cameras remove those impediments and capture images that are already in a

universally recognizable digital format that makes them easy to display and

share. You can insert digital photographs into word processing documents or

PowerPoint presentations, print them on almost any material, send them by

e-mail, integrate them into slide shows to be played on the TV, post them on

a Web site where anyone in the world can see them—even have them laser-

etched into glass or granite. A digital camera, a computer, and a high-speed

Internet connection make each of us a member of an ever-expanding network

or community of photographers and viewers.

Just as digital images make it easy to integrate photos into many of the

other things we do, digital technology makes it easy to add cameras to other

devices. One of the current trends is to embed cameras into cell phones

and other mobile devices. With just a push of a few buttons, you can snap

a picture and immediately e-mail it or post it on a Web site. It won’t be

long before there are digital cameras everywhere, all the time. What impact

this will have on our photography remains to be seen, but if history is any

indicator, people will soon be discovering practical, creative, and even artistic

ways to use these new tools.

Changes in technology always open new opportunities and present

approaches that change the way images look and are used. For example, the

introduction of the 35mm Leica in the 1930s was a revolutionary change

that made it easier to capture fast-moving action. Images became more

spontaneous and fluid, a far cry from the more formally posed images

required by much larger and more awkward cameras. Smaller cameras

allowed photographers to discretely capture life on the street and people in

motion, without modifying the flow of action by his or her simple presence.

Reality could be captured unchanged and unposed. With cameras built into

almost all cell phones in the near future, an even larger impact is possible.

Although it’s both the immediacy and flexibility of digital photography that

has made it so popular, there is one aspect that is rarely mentioned. This is

the new freedom it gives you to explore creative photography. In the 1870s

when William Henry Jackson carried 20 x 24 glass plate negatives around

the West on a mule, you can bet he hesitated before he took a photograph.

He had to set up a darkroom, coat a glass plate, expose the image, develop

the negative and then take down and repack all of the gear. We may not

be carrying window-sized glass plates, but you and I also hesitate before

taking a picture. We’re always doing a mental calculation “is it worth it?”

Subconsciously we’re running down a checklist of costs, times, effort, and so

on. During that “decisive moment,” the image is often lost or we fail to try

Try This WiTh

Film!

• In the summer of
  2003, the associated
  press reported that a
  15-year-old boy had
  foiled an abduction
  by using his camera
  phone to take photos
  of the man and his
  car’s license number.
  the man was ar-
  rested the next day.


• a man stranded
  on an ice floe during
  a solo trek to the
  north pole took a
  digital photo of the
  1,000 foot runway
  he’d dug by hand
  and e-mailed it to air
  rescue showing them
  that a landing was
  possible.

iv For inFormAtion on ClAssroom use, visit http://www.photoCourse.Com