Is Photography Art?
The controversy about whether photography is art is one that has been raging in the art world for a long time and we are not likely to totally solve it here. But it can be an important decision you have to make if you are considering a career in photography with the goal of producing quality art works. If that is where you are, the idea that someone would say “That’s not art, you just took a picture” is pretty disturbing. So it’s worth looking at the question from several different angles before we pick which side to weigh in on.
But there are some genuine reasons to at least incorporate digital technology into your professional photography game plan. These reasons are compelling enough that more and more we are seeing the big studios going all digital. So if you are running an independent photography business or if you are “just” a photography hobbyist (and thank God for the hobbyists), you may have to think through the value of moving to digital processing yourself. The amount of fuss and sheer “stuff” of doing a shoot digitally is dramatically less involved than using the older technologies. Witness how the digital revolution in photography has revolutionized the personal camera world. Now people can take as many pictures as they want and have them to review virtually instantaneously.
So is it just a matter of opinion? To some extent, yes. But there is an art world and an industry behind it that depend on there being some standards upon which art is judged. One such standard is the intent of the artist. If you produce a photograph or an art work derived from a photograph that is intended to be viewed as art, then the viewer is obligated to try to see the artistic merit in it. Whether the viewer sees that merit or not may depend on the viewer’s abilities, how good you are at getting your artistic message across or many other factors.
The impression we get when a technology delivers so much value to the public is that quality will go down. But, amazingly, this is not the case with digital photography. If anything, the quality of the photographs is as good or better than any we could do with prior technologies. And the cost both to you as the photographer and to your customer drops off so dramatically that the age old complaint the customer has had about professional photographs costing too much can be eliminated making the customer want to use your services more often.
Digital photography, being a child of the internet and the digital revolution that has swept our lives via personal computers, can be delivered in a myriad of ways and at a speed that was unheard of prior to the arrival of this technology. We can deliver the photos via email, by posting them to an online gallery or by burning them to a DVD or CD so the customer can order lots more shots for the same cost and have them delivered in a way that easy to view and store.
Further development coming virtually every year since 1990 included the rapid and phenomenal expansion of memory in digital cameras along with the concept of swappable storage drives. This changed the way people took pictures because now the number of pictures someone could take was virtually limitless. The expansion of memory also gave developers the ability to add video capture to the same devices as were used for photography so that virtually anyone could become a cameraman with that tiny camera that could by this time fit in their shirt pocket. Much of the fun of internet sites like YouTube can be attributed to the ability of the average citizen to take video anywhere, anytime and at no cost to them.
In virtually every way, digital photography, delivery and editing is superior to the way “the purists” would have us hold on to. It makes our lives as photographers easier, faster and more profitable. But above all, this is something our customers want us to use. They get to enjoy their pictures so much faster, at a more reasonable cost and the pictures can be emailed to friends and posted on their family web sites which is fun for everyone. So despite our desire to be “purists”, every reason we need is there to convince us that digital photography is the way to go.
Filed under: Arts & Entertainment