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last week at Rist Camp ~ (embiggenable)• iPhone
IT HAS BEEN WRITTEN (Ecclesiastes 1:9) AND REPEATEDLY SAID that there is no new thing under the sun. There are many who would beg to differ but, using the broadest definitions possible, re: "new" and "thing", the idea is, iMo, a reasonably sound generalized concept.
However, what about the notion of there is no new thing under the sun, re: the medium of photography and its apparatus? If I were asked that question, my answer would be, "when it comes to making pictures, there is no new thing under the sun."
In the most generalized sense, no matter the device you may using today to make pictures, since the dawn of photography, pictures were always made using a picture making device of one kind or another. And, no matter the software you may use to process those picures, the capabilities thereof mimic traditional processes dating back, again, to the dawn of photography.
Do the current picture making devices and picture processing software make it (potenially) easier and quicker to make and process pictures? Do they make it (potenially) easier and quicker to create manipulated pictures? Do they make it easier and quicker to make techically good pictures? Yes, yes and yes. But, in fact, there is little-if any thing-that a skilled craftsperson of 150 years ago could not have accomplished, albeit requiring much more time and effort.
All that written, my question is, why all the nattering and caterwauling, re: the end of photography as we know it?
My answer: Fear. Those who have distinguished their work from that of others based on their technical mastery of the medium and its apparatus, realize that that ain't gonna cut it anymore. Whether they like it or not, the democratization of the medium and its apparatus has drawn attention to the most important tool in the tool box and it's not a device or a bit of software. It is not a tool that can be purchased, online or in a big box camera store. Arguably, it most likely can not be taught or learned in a workshop.
It is, in fact, the tool that Einstein said was more important than knowledge...imagination.
iMo, imagination, which is linked to creativity, is the timeless-no new thing-tool which separates the very good from the merely average.
Imagine that.