I want to wish all photographers and photo industry workers a happy World Photography Day!
In a world where AI is incrementally destroying the photo industry, it is important for us to remember that photography-as a science and an art, was created and nurtured by human beings who wanted to record history, beauty, and create art. Before photographs were possible, there were patintings, and drawing-ONLY. Imagine living in those times before photography, if you saw “evidence” of, say, a newly discovered animal, you had to rely on a drawing created by an artist who may have not actually seen the creature!
Photography, and the photographic process have evolved over the centuries, from the Camers Obscura, to the Daguerreotype. Then on to the portable camers, using glass plate (sometimes with the help of flash powder) onward to the faster and smaller roll films. Soon cameras became a household item, with convenient rolls of film and the possibility to have a home lab in a basement or a closet. Still photography soon made way for the motion picture, bringing entertainment and education to new heights. Even through the birth of the digital era we have had artists and technicians who have created the photography used in advertising, tech manuals, text books, art collections, even in the theatre of war. Today each and every adult likely has a smartphone with a decent camera in their pocket.
Celebrate today by taking a picture. Put some thought in it. Please do not take a selfie or just a random snapshot. Think of it as a work of art. Celebrate our ability to record our world and its surroundings, its people, and life. Celebrate this before some rich person or corporation make photography irrelevant through some AI garbage.