Presentation Week 12: The impact of digital technology on photography

     The digital technology has changed the role of photography in society drastically. When photography first started it was for the wealthy and only a few people in a community knew how to use a camera. Now, most families have at least one camera in their household. Cameras have become so technically advanced in recent years. When photography first started it was a long process to get a picture from the capture to print and the photographer had to know what he was doing since you couldn’t see what it looked like after you took it. Now with digital technology it is much quicker and you get to see what the photo looks like right away so you know if you need to take another photo. The process that a photographer used to get a photo to print was with very harmful chemicals but, now you can take a picture and uploading it to the Internet in mere seconds or even print it right at home.

     

      The new technology used for photography makes it so much easier for people working in the photography business. They can take as many pictures as they want and not worry about having to waste film or materials. They just have to snap as many photos as they want and then upload them to a computer to see what is good or not. They can then easily delete a photo that does not work with the theme they are going for or just does not look good without the cost and wasted to process a photo in the past.

     

     Just a few years ago people were still using film cameras for everything. This took a lot of time because you would have to take 24 good photos so you would not waste the film. Then, make sure you wound the film the right way so you would not burn any of the photos.  After all that you would have to take them to get developed or you could do it yourself which ends up costing some money and a lot of time. Which, over the years the chemicals used for developing the photos end up harming your body from being exposed to the chemicals for long periods.

      Even though it was interesting to see your pictures develop in front of your eyes, it took up too much time and money. Today, you can take a picture on a digital camera and have it edited and sent to a friend in minutes, something you could not do while using film cameras. Further more, if using film cameras you would have to make sure you were in a good position for lighting and shadows and all the other things you have to do when taking photographs, since you could not edit them afterwards.

      The impact of digital photography has helped out the journalism world so much. With today’s technology a photojournalist can upload pictures to his website or even “tweet” it in minutes. Journalists can be on location, take hundreds of photos, write a story and have it sent back to their office to have the story printed for the next day. When photojournalists had film cameras it was a challenge to get a solid set of photographs, they would have to wait until their trip was over to develop the film and get in into the newspaper or magazines. Since people want to have the most up to date news and photos of what is going on around the world this would not be possible with out digital photography. The main problem that comes from digital photography is that more people have access to camera equipment and anyone can shoot a photo and call him or herself a photographer, which makes it harder for people that study photography to make a living at it. With everything new comes some issues but over all digital technology has made a positive impact of photography the time and money it saves has made it more accessible to the average person. 

Sources 


1. "Google Images." Google. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kp2r4gHry91qz7tu8o1_400.jpg>.


2. "Google Images." Google. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.asdfing.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/old_cameras.gif>.

3. "Google Images." Google. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://news.digitaltrends.com/images/stories/2008/08/5676/canon-intros-eos-50d-new-consumer-cameras-1.jpg>.

4. "Google Images." Google. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://img1.tradeget.com/rkphotoguide/LQXRARO51professional_films.jpg>.