In 2001 I told my partner Savannah that I think this digital thing is going to catch on. The time also coincided when the doctor report came back and found unsafe amounts of silver in my blood. The 20 plus years of printing black and white photographs had caught up with me. From that point on, the world as I knew it turned upside down.
Some photographers didn't want to make the switch to digital. They finally relented or went out of business. The learning curve is huge and when people get set in their ways, change is difficult. The talk on the street in the photography community was that going digital would free up a lot of our time and it would finally be possible to do other things. I don't know if I should laugh or cry, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
The Pros
When we look at the image above, comprised of seven separate images, I know this could not have been accomplished without great expense without digital, and my excitement for the digital platform still ranks right up there with the time I saw my very first image appear right before my very eyes in the Dektol developer.
Shooting backgrounds for interesting portraits is great. When I travel anywhere there is a limitless desire to shoot with the ida of using the shot for a background for one of my portraits. These three images are examples of shots that show just what I'm referring to.
The photo on the left was shot in Granada Spain, the one in the middle in Las Vegas, and the image on the right is Lower Wackier Drive in Chicago (almost didn't want to get out of my car, but glad I did).
The Cons?
With the proliferation of digital some of the real artist/photographers are no longer in business. We've lost some really great people in the industry because it's harder to compete. Cell phone images that people take are technically amazing and sharp. For many their own selfies and snapshots have become adequate.
For me, I continue my desire to learn and stay different enough... and used digital to my advantage. While some customers have fled, others have stayed, and the new ones are the ones who are more discerning.
In Conclusion
The digital world is a big plus, a new way of looking at things, a great opportunity to be as creative as I want. We now have a medium that can rival anything out there. My best years are definitely ahead of me!
This blog has already gone long, and will continue in more detail in future shorter blogs.