In the beginning of chapter 8, Ritchin mentioned that he once helped curate a Magnum show where there were over 400 images being shown that in shutter speed only took all but 4 seconds to create. As photographers, we create an outstanding amount of photographs all the time. Each photoshoot I do, whether is be for fine art, or for more commercial purposes, I almost always top over 400 photographs. To even think about that only equalling out to be a number of seconds in the larger spectrum is just amazing to hear because of all the work you put into them in post production. Also, in these photoshoots, I know for myself at least, I tend to delete a lot of photographs as I go. Ritchin mentioned this briefly and said that photographers see this deletion of photographs are erasing a permanent record, which made me want to stop deleting photographs because I'm not scared of the permanent record, I never had thought about it that way. One more point I found interesting in chapter 8 was the notion of the photograph being voiceless, which I agree with in the context he's talking about. He's saying that often enough photographs become voiceless in the journalistic context because the photographer often doesn't know the person and so that person's true nature doesn't come out, they're just subject to a "judging on a book on it's cover" look instead of making it so that person is depicting in their most true state. I feel that photographers should have some sort of established relationships with their clients in order to give them a voice through the photograph.
Chapter 9 was very helpful for me when I was doing my book project. My book project was based on making photographs into mixed media pieces, and this section of the book helped me see the variety of possibilities that the photograph can be subject to and morphed to create new meaning, but still have that strong moment basis that photography offers. The end of this chapter spoke a lot to me in that he was talking about how the digital environment is this alternate universe that has many tools and that with this synthetic universe, we can use it to our advantage, which is what I was looking to do in the final product of my book. By bringing together all of these different technologies, I feel I was taking a peek into the digital environment and using it as a tool.
In the last chapter, I found that I couldn't relate to it as much, but I appreciated his wrap up on the ideas of being careful with digital photography and the way we enter that world indefinitely. The idea of coexistance between the analog and the digital was also another idea I found compelling.
Overall, I found this book to be helpful in my reading of digital photography. It gave me a lot of things to think about, as well as a better understanding of the digital world of photography and how it's something we need to be careful with in terms of how we use it and absorb it in the larger spectrum of the photographic world. It's something that can be taken advantage of very easily and that with care, we can create something beautiful with it. I definitely think that some chapters were more helpful than others, and that the readings about journalistic photography weren't as helpful for me because I'm more fine art based rather than candid/journalistic base, but it was still an interesting perspective to see nonetheless.
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