I was not sure where to post this question & I did not wish to put it in the My lens is better than yours category..so here goes. Much has been written of the good & bad of digital imaging but I wonder if digital is destroying photography? My reasoning,for better or worse, is that I know of no one that shows off or displays his or her digital prints. Anyone I know that does darkroom work are allways willing to show off their latest & greatest prints;how come the digital guys are not the same? Even those that use the local drug store pull out a package of prints for inspection & comment yet the digital images seem to stay in the computer or storage media!! I realise that some photographers do show digital but I think not too many! Thus they destroy photography!!

-- Melvin (bramley@nanaimo.ark.com), February 04, 2002

Answers

Digital imaging is not destroying photography, because it is not photography. The commercial importance of classic photography is degrading, but that has nothing to do with the medium itself. I like darkroom work a lot but do not like editing images on a screen with an imaging program to enhance whatever. I just get a raytracer to create my own worlds. Digital imaging investments are huge, and you have to cycle your gear every 3 years or less. I tend rather to the alternative photography scene than the digital scene, because I like to show my work, rather then editing, uploading, next one...

-- Marc Leest (classicphoto@leest.net), February 04, 2002.

"I know of no one that shows off or displays his or her digital prints" - You can't be moving in the right circles, or going to the right galleries.
Or maybe you've been seeing digital prints without knowing it.

For the last 3 years, I've visited Edinburgh Photographic Society's annual international exhibition. This attracts thousands of entries from 80 or so countries (according to the exhibition brochure).
Around 200 of the best of those entries are chosen for the exhibition, and of those photographs, I'd say that well over half have been digitally manipulated, enhanced and/or printed. The technical quality of the images is impeccable, regardless of how they've been produced.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), February 04, 2002.

Check out Dan Buckholder's site: http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/main_pages/page1_main.htm

-- Don Sparks (harleyman7@aol.com), February 04, 2002.

I think you're being a bit harsh, I have seen many really nice images done on digital, more in color than bw because for my tastes digital bw hasn't yet reached the quality of traditional bw, but still there is some nice stuff out there. I think you should look around a little more.

-- mark lindsey (mark@mark-lindsey.com), February 04, 2002.