INTRODUCTION to an aspiring photographer

Introduction to an aspiring photographer

I have always been blown away by the fusion of technology and art that is so unique to modern photography and videography. In my opinion there is no other art form that has been influenced by modern technology more than photography. What once would have been considered “The lazy mans painting” has become one of the most popular modern art forms. In our internet age there's very few mediums that can be appreciated in their full form through a screen. You can’t fully experience a marble sculpture through a computer, yet photography, as a 2D medium of a 3D moment in time, can be portrayed in its full glory on a computer screen, even if some will argue there is nothing like a physical print. This is part of the reason i have fell in love with the art of photography. My first experiences with photography and photos, like many millennial's, was not through physical prints in a gallery, it was though the internet, on social media, on Instagram and on Facebook. There's nothing wrong with this in my opinion. Although i can appreciate the skill and patience needed to produce professional prints, A lot of my photography is taken on a digital sensor, colors edited on a computer and many of my photos live solely on Instagram. I take photographs to show how I have set my tool to create a unique window into a special moment in time. Whether these moments exist as data on a disk or laid down in ink doesn't take away from the art captured through the lens. I believe as technology advances and culture shifts take their course, original physical printing processes such as silver gelatin printing will be valued more and more like relics, an extinct medium that can be replicated but that's all they will be... replicates of the mainstream processes in which photography was appreciated long ago. This theory isn't as far fetched as it seems. In the mid to late 20th century there was a huge shift in photography and how people believed photos should be taken, this was the revolution of color film. From the beginning photos had been viewed in terms of light and dark. professionals shot in black and white since the dawn of film negatives, that is how it was, when companies started to produce color film and said "Hey, we have a process of developing your photos in color, this is the future!", but many professionals did not make the change, claiming that color photography was an amateur way of capturing real light. to an extent they were right, even today many pros prefer using huge medium format monochrome sensors as these sensors have the ability to capture much more detail as the same RBG data sensors allow in. To make a long story short, this shows that although there can be initial backlash in what people define as the right way, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I have gained a passion for photography as it allows me to pay forward some of the beauty I come across in my life.

                                          The first recorded photograph ever taken
                                          Image taken from kwerfeldein.de

A digital photograph recently taken by myself