Embedded Files
According to Yamada-Rice, "...literacy patterns [have changed] from print dominant means into multimodal ways of making meaning. As a result...images are gaining a strong hold on text in our lives" (2010). This is so true in this day and age in industrialized and post-industrial nations, where digital screens outnumber the number of people (Molina, 2013).
The digital age has changed photography and photographs. As has been discussed the screen extended the definition of a photograph. It is no longer merely a printed image, and as we have shown it never really was simply a printed image. While altering images is nothing new to the craft of photography, the speed and ease at which it can be done by anyone is startling and certainly new! As Kress and Van Leeuwen state "...visual communication is coming to be less and less the domain of specialists, and more crucial in the domains of public communication" (1996). This has created a paradigm shift in photography.
Another change that has taken place is how personal photographs are now more public than personal. We have already discussed how the screen has changed the materiality of a photograph, but the screen, and in particular the web, have also extended the purpose and meaning of personal photographs. As Vivienne and Burgess discuss "domestic and personal photography have been remediated and transformed as part of the social web, with its convergence of personal expression, interpersonal communication, and online social networks" (2013). As Van Dijck correctly asserted a number of years ago "we are witnessing a shift, especially among the younger generation, towards using photography as an instrument for peer bonding" (2008). The visual affordances of the web has turned private life into a public visual documentary.
In the digital age of photography the photograph has come to "suit a more general cultural condition that may be characterized by terms such as manipulability, individuality, communicability, versatility and ease of distribution" (Van Dijck, 2008).
Below is a just a small (and incomplete) list of networks (or platforms) where people can share and distribute their photographs:
http://plus.google.com
http://www.phanfare.com/corp/home.aspx
http://www.mobypicture.com/home
http://facebook.com
https://www.pinterest.com
http://www.snapfish.com/photo-gift/welcome
Add to this list of platforms the myriads of tablet and cell phone apps and online photo-editing/sharing sites like Dumpr and Blabberize and the list could grow quite a bit. What the internet has done is remediated the family album, the scrap book, the college dorm cork-board, and the slide projector! A photograph is no longer just a mimetic object, but also a form of visual communication. In the words of Susan Sontag a photograph "is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power," (2001). This power is best described as a form of self-representation; anyone with a camera and internet access can be a celebrity because online the audience is the world.
Besides the digitizing of cameras and of photographs, the largest contributor to the massive changes that have occurred within photography come undoubtedly from a single piece of software, a software that some claim is the most pirated software in history, a software that remediated the darkroom: Photoshop.
Click on the image to access the full version.
Figure 1. Adobe Photoshop The 20th Anniversary Timeline. 2010. Retrieved from http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2010/02/definitive-photoshop-timeline.jpg
The most recent iteration (or is that remediation) of Photoshop is Photoshop CC, a fully online version of Photoshop, complete with storage space and compatible across multiple operating systems. This is perhaps a convergence of the affordances of the web and the growing desire of people to share photographs online. There are other players in the digital darkroom arena like Adobe's own Elements, Corel's Paint Shop Pro, Paint.net, and GIMP. Together these digital darkrooms have made photography less and less the domain of specialists, and more and more the domain of everyone. Manipulating photographs is nothing new to the craft, but in the days of film photography the skills required extensive knowledge of the darkroom techniques. Today all anyone has to do is watch a few tutorials online about any of these software packages and they will quickly be able to do incredible things with their photographs.
Take a moment to try out one of the freely available tools (either Paint.net or GIMP) and select one photograph of yours (and make sure it's your own photograph) and do some editing to your photograph. If you have Elements or Photoshop feel free to use those. Explain what editing you did to your photograph. Post your photograph to the Flickr ETEC 540 Digital Photography group. We will post some questions for you to ask your classmates on the group's forum.
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