Being a photographer these days consists of being a lot more than a photographer. In the past, a photographer exposed a negative, developed film and made prints. A straight forward proposition; a single skill set focused on the production of an artifact. Today, I create a digital file, use a computer and eight different software programs to catalog, view, perfect, remove noise, desktop publish and create content in three distinct formats. Along the way I design graphic, layout page, select fonts, write and edit stories. I have been known to write poetry, too. Not only is there knowledge required to manipulate all these software packages, the operating system and the coordination of all the programs requires yet another set of skills. Photography is a lot more complex than it used to be. The complexity expands the spectrum of results, from good to bad.
I think one of the reasons for my disappointment in contemporary photographs is contemporary photographers have to acquire all these disparate skills simultaneously. Trying to learn so many different skills at once is incredibly difficult because each of these very different skills is learned in a very different way at a very different rate.
New photographers are used to learning software because learning new software is a skill set that is a requirement for citizens of the twenty first century. Software authors have developed educational methods to get users competent with their software in very short order.
We’ll continue next week with why you can be taught software but you have to learn photography.
Comments