When I was growing up, my first camera was a Tower box camera. I think it was a Sears brand. Obviously, it was film and it had a simple fixed lens. I even had a small film developing set to print my own black and white pictures. It was fun for a while but I was way too young and impatient and yes, a bit lazy to print my own. It was too much trouble. Once I started working with color film, there was no desire to develop and print my own pictures. I would take my film down the the local drugstore and they would ship it off for processing by Kodak. A week later, I could look at the set of bad snapshots. There must be a better way! Then I found girls and had no time for photography!

Fast forward until after I was married. We loved to travel and nothing goes better with travel than photography. I got my first SLR film camera. It had many of the new features like a split screen focus and built in light meter. The split screen focus showed the picture in the lens-finder as a split picture from top to bottom. The two halves were offset from each other and as you brought the picture into the proper focus, the two halves would move in opposite directions until they lined up perfectly. Snap and you had the picture. Proper exposure was achieved by watching the light meter in the lens-finder. Adjusting the shutter and aperture would move the light meter needle to the center and proper exposure. Now think about all that and take a picture. It was not all that easy. Focus, adjust speed, adjust aperture, readjust focus and snap. Now add movement as you pan to follow the player running down the field. It took a lot of dexterity to get the shot in focus and properly exposed. Would you like to now add a zoom to the mixture. Not too many soccer Moms getting decent photos of Johnny making the touchdown. Landscapes were not too hard to get a decent shot but if movement were involved, chances lessened drastically. All this talk about the past is boring even to me and I am writing about it. Why even mention it? I mention it because it shows just how far we have come and I didn’t even go back to the true beginnings with big billowed box cameras and flash-powder. What were they really doing under that black tent?

Computer: enter stage left. Talk about change, remember all those adjustments I had to make with my first SLR. Now, the little computer inside the camera does all that for me if I want. To help me still feel important, they add the manual mode. For those purists out there, still hanging onto that thought pattern, and their loftier than thou, attitude, who propose that a good photographer shoots RAW in full manual mode, I say, go back to the old film camera like I had in the 60’s. If you are going to promote the values of the pure photography, do it without a net. Take your pictures and then go have them developed or develop them yourself and see if all your settings are correct. If they are not, you have to go back to the site and do it all over again! Oh wait, the game is over or the wedding was yesterday. OOPS! Sorry! There are a few photographers I know personally who could do that and do it right the first time but they are all old times who like me had to do it that way. If you were a professional photographer back in those days, I certainly respect your skill set.

So, what am I saying? Am I proposing you go get a new model high end camera and point the dial to the green box “automatic” ? No, that isn’t what I am saying. But I am saying, you spent a lot of money on that camera let it do the “busy work”. I seldom due “manual focus” but I do use the spot meter to pick my single focus point. That way the camera does not focus on the tree when I am shooting the deer behind it. I lock focus on my subject and then recompose and shoot. If I am shooting moving subjects like an eagle in flight, I set the shutter speed at around 1/1600 sec. I let the camera determine the ISO and sometimes the aperture also.  For most other shooting, I set the aperture and let the camera set the shutter speed. The aperture determines the depth of field. Only I know for sure what I want there but the newer cameras are getting fairly smart at guessing at it.  After I take the shot, I can look at the capture in my screen and see the histogram to be sure I got it right. I will go on record here to say that I worked so long without a net, I often forget to use it. This is not something I recommend nor am I proud of my failure to use it. You don’t have time to check each shot but give it a quick glance just to be safe. There is nothing worse than hiking back from a waterfall and finding the dial had inadvertently been bumped and was setting the exposure 2 stops wider. Everything was blown out! Real Bummer!

The title of this blog entry was “the new world” and all I have been talking about was the past and present. Where are we going? I see the field of photography changing dramatically. WE have made the physical characteristics of cameras and lenses about as good as they are going to get. Now it is the software and hardware’s time to shine. I see photographers spending a lot more time on the computer and less behind the camera. This is already true for the portrait photographers. The size 16 bride wants to be photographed as a size 6. The wedding in the backyard wants to be presented as being on the beach. Make the cloudy day bright and sunny. These things are all possible now. But I see the buyers less receptive to what was and demanding what they wanted it to be.

Recent advances in HDR photography make it possible to see even better than the human eye. There was a time you had to move subjects away from the bright windows because you could not expose for both the subjects and the window. With HDR, you can. Suddenly the view outside can be just as clear and the dark indoors. This is possible now but some cameras are doing this automatically now. They take multiple shots and merge them into an HDR picture file. I think there will be advances in the sensors so that this won’t even be necessary.

I also think we will see a difference in how pictures are displayed. Gone will be the family picture wall. To replace it, wall mounted HDTV will show continuous slide shows of the family. Using a simple search will bring up Little Sis pictures that will run throughout her birthday party. The large screen will display the travel photos when it is not being used for TV viewing. Dedicated viewers will contain Dynamic still shots. An example will be a movie of a waterfall. At first glance, it will look like a normal photograph but then you notice the waterfall is falling. The trees are swaying in the breeze, occasionally, a local bird or other animal will move into the frame. The background will contain all the sounds from the scene with a quiet background accompaniment. These dynamic stills will be purchased or rented like a DVD. The pictures will be designed to be non-distracting if you are trying to converse with someone but will be more like looking out a window. Some might be dedicated viewers simulating a window that looks out over the neighbor’s house 3 feet away. Got a condo wedged between two other units. The “Dynamic window” will still give you a view on the side complete with warming sunlight. Other seemingly static photos will be Zoomable. The touch screen will take your touch to indicate you want to zoom in to that now illuminated dark alley or cave. Super slow motion will bring in a thunderstorm almost imperceptibly. Remember watching the aquarium for hours and remember how calming and restful it was? This will be one step further.

My advice to young aspiring photographers, learn your equipment first but then learn the hardware and software that will be used to present your new dynamic art!