Tag Archives: Higashimori

Exceptional (Akihabara night taxi)

Akihabara night taxi, by Camera Freak.

I proclaimed earlier that digital photography is not a real revolution because it had not brought with it a new visual language. Even when writing that I was well aware of this exception: HDR (High Dynamic Range Imaging). Perhaps one will soon grow tired of the effect, but some of the images can look quite remarkable at times when the effect is used in moderation. Like in this example, this can work quite well for landscape/cityscape photos, esp. Tokyo (not my photo by the way, just blogged via flickr as an example of someone taking good images of Japan using that technique [although my friend Mr Higashimori is bound to object, with good reason as always]). At the moment more convincing than camera tossing or the various ways of trying to emulate a film look, but one can clearly feel half-life ticking away. When does an effect end being a pure effect and become a new language? I suppose when you are able to detect an artistic vision behind it. A lot of the digital work seems to be done for its own sake, just because we can. You run the software and you’re there. And so is everyone else.

One other thing: has anyone else noticed that there is no decent discourse about digital image making? All attempts to do so in public fora are destined for the dreaded digital vs. film debate. We realise once more that few intelligent comments are drowned in the myriad of average voices. This is the down side of the great equaliser and why I suspect that Web 2.0 is of limited interest to the minority that matters.