PREAMBLE:

I've been speaking with a good friend of mine recently and have come to a rather interesting conclusion on the state of photographic art that is flooding the market recently. The key word is "market" and how it directly influences the purchases that the uninformed make.

There can be no doubt that recent advances in sensor manufacturing have both improved image quality and also reduced pricing on everything from snap cams to digital SLRs to digital backs. It is a fast-paced world of releases every 6-14 months of the newest technology and has enabled people to capture images at a price point which was not available in previous years. Now cameras are "affordable" to those that feel the need to capture moments of time and for those that feel an underlying need to create art through this medium.

For those that can relate to the film darkroom I feel it necessary to also include the technology of monitors, printers, applications for processing those digital negatives and to a slightly lesser extent computing power. All of these things are also updated or upgraded on a regular basis, and in some cases they HAVE to be upgraded depending on what type of camera you obtain. In all of my years with using film I have used several cameras including a Minolta SRT-101, Pentax K-1000, Minolta X-700 and the occasional medium format Hasselblad. I have made pinhole cameras and also done photograms and all of this was done in one darkroom with the same enlarger. The point here is that when I switched cameras, especially 35mm, I did not have to go out and buy a new darkroom to simply process my negatives or make prints.

With the megapixel wars it became somewhat necessary to increase processing power in able to effectively work with larger filesizes. A couple of years ago I had to edit a digital back file that initially was 300MB, and at the time my computer was not up to snuff. Consequently, Photoshop would crash every once in a while as I was working on the image. I was eventually able to get the file edited, but not without a tremendous amount of patience and frequent saves. What it comes down to is that you need to have a computer that is capable of working with files of a certain size so that you are not annoyed by the tool, so that you are free of the limitations that would enable you to produce the final prints you desire.

REALITY:

Let's get real for one second here. And perhaps it will take some a bit longer to understand, but it does not matter what kind of camera, computer, printer or memory card you have save for ONE thing: The combination of your tools which enable you to produce art you can be proud to show.

The market is geared towards making companies money, plain and simple. Try and think about how this affects your creative desire. For those that are concerned with "the newest thing", for those that buy every single "version" of hardware or software before it is even past it's MTF date or before it becomes inoperable ... seriously consider WHY you made that new purchase.

For instance, some buy new computers with fancy video cards to be able to play the latest games on the market. That is because the game industry drives the hardware manufacturers. Just as the players of these games request more realistic light and physics to bring more "realism" into the software. It's a loop that is still in it's infancy and makes perfect sense in today's market.

But is the latest thing really needed for photography? Think about this long and hard and you will realise that NO is the answer that will slap you in the face. Having the latest camera or the fastest computer on the market will not improve your artwork!

Although the digital frontier of photography is still in it's infancy, we have reached a point with current technology to produce imagery which is at least equal to film in almost every regard. The only reason I mention film is because the digital market was derived from the film market. It's a shame that certain companies felt they could not compete financially "against" film and subsequently dissolved. I, for one, firmly believed that film and digital could coexist. But when it comes to money, it is often one way or the other with corporations. I have embraced digital, because at the end of the day when someone is looking at a print I am showing them, it doesn't matter what tools I used to make the image.

And for clarification I feel obligated to add that I think of photography as a style of art regardless of materials used. Film, digital, polariod, pinhole, photograms etc. are all techniques used within the style that I define as Photography. I do not "equate" film to digital in any way, as they are different except for the fact that light has been captured on a light sensitive/capturing material.

Let us get the market out of our heads if we can. Let us not be so concerned with megapixels , with format wars, with price-points and what is going to be outdated before it is even released. Let us not be concerned with which camera/lens/computer/printer is the "best." Let us be concerned primarily with creating art. The creation of art should be, in part, about skillfully using tools that are available to us. If we are constantly aquiring new tools and having to learn how to utilize them we become less concerned with what we are trying to say with our work. It's not something we are aware of, but the quality of the message becomes muted or diluted whether we want it to be or not. This is something that has become apparent not just on this website, but MANY websites. It has also become apparent, in my local area at least, with the many small galleries that will print digital images at any size and try to sell them for quick profits.

TIME & LAZINESS:

So why then do we see a proliferation of muted intent? There are two major reasons for this.

1: People feel the need to create photographic art because the tools have become economically feasible, and jump into a pool of marketing that confuses them.

2: People are lazy, or unwilling to learn on their own. I beseech you, how on earth can you call your art your own and be able to clearly justify your intent if you have no idea how you managed to obtain a print, or digital image?

It comes down to learning your tools, and applying that knowledge to your message of intent.

The Internet CAN be a helpful source of information, but it can also be just as confusing as the marketing hype supplied by companies trying to sell a product. If "John" wants to know the opinions of users on a message board about what kind of camera to buy for his start into the photographic frontier of art he can and should feel free to ask this rather open question. BUT, John will invariably be flooded with user opinion that will not affect how HE wants to use the new camera. He is forced to try and sift through the comments of others to obtain information that he feels pertains to him.

But why ask the question of users on a message board when the manufacturers supply reference material for each product they sell? It is because of the swarm of information that these companies produce to get an edge in the market and some people feel that there is an underlying dishonesty with business. But when "John" asks his question on a message board he sometimes forgets that there is something called "Brand Loyalty" with the users of certain company products. Brand loyalty is more dangerous than any product brochure that a camera company produces, because the loyal users can sometimes "forget" that certain functions or features are not available in the tools they use over other tools available.

There is however one sure-fire way John can make a decision based on technical information he can obtain through the internet. He must go to a local camera shop or electronics store and put the actual cameras he's considering purchasing in his hand. Since John will be the one using the camera, holding it in his hands and carrying it around wherever he wants to shoot images, he has to be sure that it feels comfortable, that buttons are where they should be for his hands etc. There is nothing more aggrivating than a tool that frustrates you ... it impedes the creative process.

Pt. II will follow as I have time.

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