To set this in context, I operate in a small corner of the world of publishing. I first embraced the world of digital in 1985, at least on the editorial side. In 1991 my small publication brought everything in house by using digital. First we scanned the prints and slides. In more recent years much of the photographic material arrives via email in digital form.
What has this meant? The color separation budget is gone. The stripping cost for platting is gone. The time required to prepare an editorial page is greatly reduced. The magazine now goes direct to plate on the press further reducing the time to complete a job. These are all cost savings.
What has changed? The skills to implement this are now placed on people who previously never needed to even thing of them. In some cases jobs have been lost. In other cases new jobs have been created. There has been an evolution in how something is produced. An evolution that the end user is totally unaware of.
What does this have to do with the transition from film to digital in the photography industry? The same that it did in the printing industry. The end user will still see the same picture. The process of creating the image will have changed dramatically.
There are costs associated with the equipment, skills to use the technology, and new methods of delivering the end product. You can still do it the "old" way, however, competitively you are liable to be at a disadvantage.
What I think is changing more than the method for producing images is how we will deliver those images in the future. Picture cell phones, quality not-with-standing, who would have thought about that ten years ago? Technology just supplies us with new tools to create. What we create is still an art form. We can be much more creative in producing images. How we capture an image or later in post-production. How we deliver our product is evolving. New markets are opening up and new ways to reach audiences never before feasible. Just look at Garage Glamour. The launch five years ago has changed this genre by opening up communication links, exposing talent, and fostering a community of like minded people.
Film to digital is only one visible front to a much broader change in the way we communicate as a society.
Tom
|