As always, photographic technology continues to advance. That is not news, or at least it shouldn’t be. This has been the case for the entire 175 year (or so) history of the medium, as the methods of recording light and reproducing images have evolved in beneficial ways. It also shouldn’t be news that the most recent changes have involved the adaption of digital technologies to photography — the capture, storage, processing, sharing, and printing of photographs.

This progress is a good thing and, aside from some who prefer to work with old processes, eventually the value of the new technologies becomes clear to most photographers and we accept and adapt to the new and find it advantageous. Almost everyone welcomes the steady pace of refinement and improvement in the technology of photography. However, it seems to me that some imagine that this progress is happens at rates that are simply not possible.

It is common, when some new technology comes out, to hear some folks say that it makes the older gear irrelevant or that it “blows it out of the water,” and that the improvements are of a tremendous magnitude and will change your photography in radical ways. Eventually this is arguably true, but the time frame over which truly radical change happens is much longer than a few years. In reality, most individual “upgrade” changes are incremental. While they are good and valuable, they do not “change photography as we know it” or improve results in radical ways.

Think about it this way. How many times have we heard the next incremental change described in hyperbolic terms like those in the previous paragraph? If the changes really warranted the use of these radical descriptions every year or so, over a period of a few years (much less over a period of decades!) imagine how astonishingly photographs and photography would have changed. But that hasn’t happened. The changes take quite a while to add up to something earth-shaking. Even the change to digital photography — which I would argue is very significant — has taken place over a time frame of decades.

Progress is real, and progress is good. But, when viewed from a longer perspective, it doesn’t happen as fast as we sometimes imagine.

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment. Connections to photography may be tenuous at times!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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