Bob Maxey <written_by@xxxxxxx> writes: > I think this is what bothers me about digital > photography. Everything is too easy; the skills I learned have PS > equivalents and no longer a need for a darkroom. Perhaps it is sour > grapes. > > The digital photographer might not know anything about color > temperature and CC filters because he or she can fix it later. The > question is, how many old school skills should all photographers be > "required" to learn? If you are using film, you use color > correction. If you use a digital camera, you use a PS filter. Both > photographers have the same general needs and specific tools to fix > and correct. > > When I see a live performance, I am always amazed at the talent of > the players. I know they paid their dues and they struggled for > decades to hone their craft. When I listen to a studio fabrication, > I might like the music, but I know how lazy the players are because > they cheated. Unless you do not see any real difference between a > skilled player and a push-button equivalent. I think these paragraphs capture the essence of my frustration with lots of opinions running around on these issues -- on photography, music, and also computer programming (my professional field). It boils down to this -- why does it always seem to come down to *being hard*? Why do you care? Does it really matter if that lighting / note / whatever is easy or hard? Shouldn't it matter whether it's *the right one* for the place it was used more than anything else? Making things easier is unambiguously good, by my standards. Being lazy is a *virtue* -- one of the greatest ones. Essentially all "progress" is made by lazy people working very hard to make things easier for everybody. Why is it so critical to you how hard the musician worked to create a sound? And, if some clever musician finds a way to make it easier, how is that a bad thing? Making things easier makes them accessible to more people. I'm very certain there exist people with remarkable artistic vision, who are put off enough by the plodding technical exercises that they never get to expressing their vision. Making things easier brings those visions into the pool, and I think makes us all richer. It probably also makes people with *no* particular vision, but who *do* have the technical chops to make technically acceptable images, music, or programs, less secure. I sometimes wonder if some of the abhorrence of making things easier comes from people who know, somewhere down inside, that their skill in the technical aspects is all they have, and are bothered by that becoming devalued. (In photography that's probably me; I've been shooting for 30 some years, never full-time professional, and I don't seem to have a unique and penetrating vision, just pretty decent technical skills. I got used to knowing that some time ago, so it's no big deal. I like documenting things that interest me.) But there has to be a lot more to it than that; *every time* something is made easier, a bunch of people complain that others should have to suffer as they have suffered. Often they can't make a case for why. -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
