The May issue of the Digital Journalist is now available. Unfortunately they don’t have a direct link to that issue but delve into the archives for past articles.
Digital to Analog – an essay exploring the transititon from film to digital. The author laments the attitude novice photographers have these days – it’s digital, it’s somehow “better” than film, but we’re “picture builders”, not “takers”.
I agree with him to a certain extent, but the freedom afforded to me by the digital medium and a half-decent camera has helped me get much better in my art.
I understand completely how choosing a simple camera, without automatic controls of any sort, will force a photographer to learn “how” to take photographs properly. When I want to experience that I simply set my camera to Manual mode and I get a lot more control over the camera. That doesn’t help my technique or eye of course. That comes with time and practice and I think I’ll never stop developing that!
If you consider a picture as a frozen moment in time… Can you alter that moment? Yes and no. Yes, you can tweak the image in a darkroom or in Photoshop… But more importantly: you can never capture THAT moment again.