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Do Digital Photos Endanger History?
Ant writes "Experienced photographer Jayne West wrote her degree dissertation on the
historical impact of digital capture. She
argues that the use of digital photography in
news reporting means we could lose a
valuable pictorial record of history." Much of her argument seems weak to me (precisely because digital photography allows the instant culling West talks about). The digital storage itself, though, perhaps ought to make us nervous.
on your CDs. Unless you splurge for the $1.00 CDR silver or gold ones made with the special dyes- those cheap ones you get at compusa at 100 for 20$ won't last 5 years...
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And that assumes you don't ever play them or leave them in the light or expose them to exessive heat or excessive humidity and actually remember to back them up and
...which isn't much at all for news shooter. Those guys crank through film. It's not like they buy it at the Rite Aid -- they get those shrink-wrapped blocks of what, 20 or 25 rolls? "Film is cheap, shots are expensive."
Point is that with film there was no choice in the matter. With 35mm film, nobody is going to develop just the good frames, and it's not even worth cutting the bad ones out of the strip. They stay in the archive because there's no reason to remove them -- you can't reuse the medium anyway.
Digital media are reusable, and will be reused as soon as there's an issue. Even if the media were free and weightless, shooters would still edit and make room just in case another shot comes along.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
The long-term issue caused by the movement to digital cameras by the journalism world (especially fast turnaround publications like daily newspapers) is not storage or archiving. These are inconveniences that will be settled with the advancement of technology and time. While CaseyB might be able to get a few more images on his consumer digital than a professional journalist using a Nikon D1H, I agree that these are not the important issues.
The real change that digital cameras have brought to journalism has nothing to do with what's inside the camera, but what's on the outside: the preview window. Before digital cameras (and scanners in the situation of photographers that processed film on-site and then transmitted), most photojournalists didn't see the results of their shooting until it appeared in the paper the next day. Because his images were being recorded into a 'black box' the photographer was always forward thinking - trying to get the best image from the subject in front of him. Giving the photographer the power to see what they had just produced suddenly put the photographer in the editing chair, and gave him the power to judge whether an image was newsworthy. With a push of the 'trash can' button, the image was lost forever.
Shooting and editing are fundamentally different challenges. I've been in both shoes before and they require very different skill sets and motivations. Editors are responsible for representing the intent of the story, as well as trying to find the best image. Because these tasks aren't mutually exclusive, an image that the photographer might have considered unusable (because it was slightly out of focus, poorly composed, underexposed, etc.), could be the perfect choice if it does a good job of 'telling the story' despite its flaws. So, while it is true that 'infinite' storage in the future will elimintate the need for the photographer to delete any images, it won't get rid of the photographer's new role as pre-editor.
Probably my favorite example of a situation where shooting on film created an unexpected timeless image was shot by Dirck Halstead, a veteran Time photographer. He shot the famous Monica Lewinsky hugging Bill Clinton photograph. At the time he shot the image, Monica was an unknown intern that happened to receive a warm hug from Bill at an event on the White House lawn. There were a lot of photographers present, but Dirck was one of the only ones shooting film. When the scandal broke a few months later, Dirck had the feeling that he had seen her face before, so Time hired a researcher to dig in his archives and find the image. The image was found, and Dirck was the only one that got the shot despite their being many other photographers there -- other photographers, all shooting digital. Many of them probably shot that image, but who would save an image of the President hugging an unknown person?