Snap a photo anywhere, any time
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY Digital cameras democratize act of taking photos Pictures can be sent around the globe in seconds
If you’ve been to a large event recently, you’ve likely witnessed a technological revolution — hundreds of hands clutching tiny digital cameras or camera phones, capturing pictures and movies that may soon be buzzing across the Internet to family, friends, even the media. Only a few years after they debuted as an expensive toy, digital cameras have taken the world by storm. They’ve changed life for photographers, amateur and pro alike. The effects go farther, experts say. Digital photography’s power to produce instant, emailable pictures that you can speed instantly around the globe has caused a fundamental change in the way we communicate. Along the way, it’s given us all a seat at the media table.
Digital photography has been one of technology’s greatest recent successes. More than 40 per cent of Canadian households now own a digital camera, according to the Canadian Imaging Trade Association. The technology has been adopted more quickly even than DVD players and VCRs.
What’s the attraction? For the most part, it’s convenience and immediacy.
“ You take the picture and you can see it right away,” says Toronto’s Linda Woods, who, like many other digital photographers, says she takes her digital camera everywhere.
Unlike old Polaroid- type cameras, digital lets you print, copy and manipulate your photos to your heart’s content, and email them with a click of a mouse.
Woods, who volunteers for the Canadian Peregrine Foundation monitoring urban falcons, says the small size of her camera allows her to take pictures in tight spots when she’s looking in on nests. She can then post them almost immediately on the foundation’s website ( www. peregrinefoundation. ca), or email them to interested people.
Digital has also changed life for professional photographers. Struan Campbell- Smith, a noted fashion and advertising photographer with Toronto’s KlixPix agency, says that after shooting many digital assignments, he’s convinced the new technology more than equals the old.
“I’m so impressed with the quality,” he says. “ It’s already surpassed film.”
Shooting digitally has taken away the constant concern over how much film he’s shooting, since digital media offer almost unlimited capacity. And there’s no need to search for the perfect film for each assignment; you just tweak the camera settings. As well, the digital images can be endlessly manipulated, allowing you to create the perfect image. However, CampbellSmith says, photographers now often end up doing the post- production work the photo lab used to do. That means they need computers, hard drives and printers. He never shoots without a “ digital guru” along to handle the technical issues.
“You’re carrying a lot more stuff than you used to. You used to just take your camera and go.” The greatest impact of the new photography, however, may be in the way we share information. Mark Federman, chief strategist at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, sees digital photography as part of a movement toward connecting everyone electronically to everyone else, all the time. Federman points to websites like Flickr (www.flickr.com), which allow people to post their pictures and view others’ photos of the same subject — effectively creating a collective memory of shared events.
“ That is a profound change,” he says. “ Previously, we had our private memories, and if I shared them with you it was in a photo album: ‘ Here are my pictures of my vacation.’ But through Flickr, it’s: ‘ Here are my pictures of your vacation.’ ” The digital revolution has also created a fundamental power
shift in the mass media, he adds. Now,
anyone who finds
himself in a news
event can become a
press photographer
by taking a picture or
movie and sending it
to a newspaper or TV station. For example, most of the best photos and film footage from the Asian tsunami and the London bombings came from the people involved in the disasters, some transmitted instantly from cellphone cameras.
“ It used to be media for the masses,” Federman says. “ Now, the definition has to be media by the masses.”
Looking at the effects so far, it’s daunting to ask what lies ahead. And much of it involves the same kind of electronic connectedness.
First, the cameras will continue to get smaller and more userfriendly, with larger LCD monitors and more powerful movie formats. And they’ll get smarter: Canon recently revealed a new system that fires the camera when it recognizes a human smile.
However, much of the buzz today is about wireless connectivity. There will soon be kiosks in coffee shops, malls and video stores that allow you to pop in your memory card and send your photos wirelessly to a printer or to a photo shop for printing.
And, this year, manufacturers have brought out the first commercial WiFi cameras, equipped with wireless transmitters like those in laptop computers. Soon, you’ll be able to email photos straight from the camera while you’re taking them, or beam them directly to your computer or printer without the need for a memory card.