Poster Development and Plan

What made the immediate shareability of a Polaroid instant pic so popular in the mid 20th century is making digital cameras with Wi-Fi capabilities equally enticing today. Connectivity is the next step in our photography revolution. Many of the latest models of any camera boast Wi-Fi capabilities that mean you can immediately upload your holiday snaps to your social media accounts or send them off to your loved ones.

Professional photographers used to take photos only if they were sure it was a good shot. Amateur photographers did not want to waste one shot on a roll of film. Photography was an expensive hobby. Today, however, people take masses of images, because storing them on digital memory cards costs next to nothing. And taking 100 pictures of an event instead of 10 raises your chances of getting a really good shot and a better photo.

People have their camera with them all the time.

From the early 1950’s to the back end of the 19990’s Single Lens Reflex cameras, or SLRs for short, have been the dominant form factor for cameras used by the majority of consumers and professionals alike (En.wikipedia.org, 2017). This comes down to the fact that this form factor is relatively compact, in comparison to other styles, like the medium format camera. Having this size advantage allows users to carry their camera with more comfort, especially when they are faced with the additional task of having to carry extra lenses and general kit. During this time the availability and range of 35mm film became increased drastically. This meant that getting your film developed by a professional was easy and accessible and you could even do it yourself at home if you had the right equipment and know how.

Before the development in electronics every single camera would have been operated in a manual fashion meaning that you would have to adjust the ISO, aperture, shutter speed, etc. by your own judgment usually only relying on your light meter as a starting point. This obviously required dedicated skill and experimentation to produce images that would have been exposed and composed well because you didn’t have the luxury of being able to see a preview of the photograph as soon as it had been taken. When you had finished with your roll of film you would have had to have had it developed, which was another expense on top of the price of the film in the first place. If you wanted it to be done straight away and to your own liking you would have had to set up your own darkroom and develop it yourself. Once again this is an expense and would have required technical knowledge of the film and chemicals you would be using.

Although automation and automatic modes on cameras are nothing new, the exponential development of electronics has given birth to fully digital cameras. Instead of recording the light onto a section of film, the light data is recorded by the sensor put in the films place. Professional photographers would end up only taking a shot if they knew it was going to be good and amateurs did not want to waste any of their expensive film (English-online.at, 2017). But now you can take as many photos as you would possibly need providing you have a memory card that is big enough giving you a better chance of getting the shot you want. All you have to worry about now is the price and capacity of your memory card (English-online.at, 2017). Even loading it is vastly easier than loading a new roll of film.

However, unless you are shooting your images under a picture profile or as a JPEG you will have the choice of being able to adjust your photos using post production software. Many of the skills that come from developing film can be transferred, such as cropping, dodging and burning, but as time passes more and more ways to edit and manipulate your images are available. Each of these tools will require new skill sets. Having said this though, software does not replace talent and creativity and can certainly not make up for bad camera technique (Kestenholz, 2017).

The continuation from SLRs to Digital SLRs and this steady form factor has really allowed for the development of features, new and old. This has improved the usability and diversity of cameras across the board. DSLRs have now developed at such rate that they have the ability to be used as film making tools. The quality is such that mainstream films will use them in the place of their dedicated cinema cameras if the situation means that the camera is likely to get damaged or is just too big for the location. Having so many features means that to get the best out of your camera you have to have a great understanding of how it works, from the physical aspect all the way down to the depths of every menu.

What has really changed the way we take photographs in this new digital age is the implementation and drastic surge in quality of cameras in mobile phones. Easy access to taking high resolution images means that people don’t hesitate to take photos with their phone. However, as sophisticated as phone cameras are at the moment, they are also incredibly simple. All you have to do is point and shoot. There is almost no skill involved, other than that of framing your image.

Connectivity is the next step in the photography revolution. What made the immediate shareability of a Polaroid instant so popular in the past is the same effect had by the recent addition of Wi-Fi connectivity in all new devices. You can now upload and share that image with friends, family or the world with a few simple steps. The creation of Instagram pushes this even further. Instagram lives on the devices that the vast majority of us are using to take the photos we share. It has fused the act of taking pictures with the act of viewing and sharing pictures. As a result, Instagram created one seamless user experience: Shoot, process, share, view, like, comment, shoot, process, share. Repeat. Bareham, J. (2017)

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Bareham, J. (2017). Post-process: why the smartphone camera changed photography forever. [online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/20/4377290/post-process-why-the-smartphone-camera-changed-photography-forever [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Digitaltrends.com. (2016). How digital photography reinvented itself to become better than ever. [online] Available at: https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/dt10-how-digital-photography-reinvented-itself/ [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Single-lens reflex camera. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-lens_reflex_camera [Accessed 16 Nov. 2017].

English-online.at. (2017). The digital camera and how it changed taking photos. [online] Available at: http://www.english-online.at/news-articles/technology/digital-camera-how-it-changed-photography.htm [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Kestenholz, D. (2017). How Technology Changed Photography and What to Learn From It | THEME. [online] The.me. Available at: https://the.me/how-technology-changed-photography/ [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Making an Impact with your Poster. (2012). 1st ed. [ebook] Liverpool: University of Liverpool, pp.1-15. Available at: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/computingservices/printing/making-an-impact-with-your-poster.pdf [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Welch, A. (2015). The Evolution of Photography | Contrastly. [online] Contrastly.com. Available at: https://contrastly.com/the-evolution-of-photography/ [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017].

Middleton, N. (2015). Canon A-1 main user controls. [image] Available at: http://photo-analogue.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-canon-1.html [Accessed 16 Nov. 2017].