Tivadar Domaniczky

The Value of Photography

25th of May, 2021

I invite you to a journey from mid-19th century France to the highways of the 21st century ether-internet to find out what the value of photography is. The reason for this quest is that although the seemingly never-ending series of industrial revolutions and digital democratization have altered the profile of many industries, only a few changed so dramatically that even its fundamentals changed, like photography.

Photography, as visual representation, was born as the love-child of painting and chemistry - art and science. Since the Renaissance, painters were looking for methods to help them better capture visual scenes. Technological advancements and discoveries in the 1800s made the centuries-long dream of capturing light and freezing time happen, and the dualism that is defined by photography’s parents is ever present in this craft. Art is seen as one’s ability of self-expression and finding one’s soul, while the sciences of the industrial revolution were seeking the means of simplifying complex processes to achieve mass production at a reasonable cost.

When Louis Daguerre in 1838, set his large wooden box camera up in the window of his Paris studio, pointing to the Boulevard du Temple, little did he think that his invention of a practical photographic process, the daguerreotype, will change how we perceive and understand the world around us. The result of this Parisian spring morning experiment was the first photograph depicting a living person as he was standing at the street corner while getting his shoes polished. Daguerre’s more than 10 minutes-long exposure unleashed a new visual discipline that reshaped not only how we produce and perceive visual arts in modern history, but had a huge impact on communication, privacy, security and daily lives in general in the centuries that followed.

Daguerre had to reveal the complex technique of using silver-plated sheets of copper with the combination of iodine vapors and processing with mercury fumes and sodium thiosulfate to the French Academy of Sciences. Following his demonstration, in exchange for a life-long pension to the inventor, the French government released the patent free to the world, laying down the path for the new form of visual representation to flourish. It was the American painter and inventor of the telegraph, Samuel Morse who championed Daguerre’s revolutionary process in the United States. The American public gave a very welcoming reception to the daguerreotypes, and saw it as a fast and cheap replacement for paintings, that not only made a boost to magazine publishing, but also allowed members of the middle-class to have the opportunity to visually represent their family and loved ones in their own home, just as aristocrats and nobility had done by having themselves painted.

In response to the demand, horse-drawn carriages, acting as mobile photo studios carrying all the chemicals and equipment required to make daguerreotypes, set out to roam the country and to take photographs of land and its people. The images, just as paintings, were put into decorative frames and were kept in high regard. By 1853, an estimated three million daguerreotypes per year were produced in the United States. The works of the era’s pioneering craftsmen still resonate today in the popular photographic genres, landscape and portraiture.

The dangers of working with toxic chemicals and the difficulties of the process, urged further innovations to both improve and simplify the techniques involved. In 1884, George Eastman developed a dry gel system that successfully replaced the photographic plate, and in 1885 he introduced the roll-film. Eastman’s invention meant that the process of taking photographs no longer required the operation of a huge apparatus and dealing with dangerous materials on site where the photographs were taken, and allowed the photographers to be more mobile. The logical consequence of the roll-film led to another breakthrough invention that further commercialised photography, the box camera. In 1888, George Eastman released the Kodak camera to the mass market with the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest”. The cameras came with 100 preloaded exposures and they had to be sent back to the Eastman factory in order to get the pictures developed and reload the cameras with film. That is, essentially, a subscription based model, which is very well known in today’s photography industry and the whole media world.

These simplifications gave way to further innovations and fine tuning the techniques of both the act of taking photographs and processing them. This article does not have the intention of listing all the details of the vast list of magnificent innovations and approaches that helped to improve photography in the first half of the 20th century. It took another 100 years or so when new frontiers in photographic techniques were discovered due to technological advancements in media.

The idea of digital photography, taking and processing images without chemical materials involved in the actual process, came to existence in 1969, when Willard S Boyle and Goerge E Smith invented the first CCD sensor, and in 1975 Steven Sasson, a young engineer at Eastman Kodak, built the first digital still camera. It took another 15 years for digital solutions aiding photography popping up on the market, first as an additional feature to the well-established film cameras, and later as an independent form of visual representation.

The first photograph that was taken by a digital camera to be sent over the internet real-time was shot by Phillipe Kahn depicting his newborn daughter, Sophie, in 1997. Phillipe’s improvised invention synchronized a digital camera, a flip-top mobile phone and his laptop and was delivered through the internet to 2000 family members and friends to celebrate the first moments of a newborn child.

Since then, it became a standard that cameras are part of our communication tools. The determinative notion of photography changed dramatically on the mass market. It is no longer the preservation of a moment and representing a subject that matters to the photographer what is important, but the photographer becoming the messenger and transmitter of a moment so that others can join instantly, even if that very moment is personal and sensitive. This paradigm shift in the role of the photographer, from being a craftsman to become a transmitter, resulted in the devolution of the actual photographic product, the photograph itself.

As the transmitter can be easily replaced by software, it is often said that nowadays, everyone is a photographer as everyone who has a smartphone carries a camera. The conclusion of this statement is degrading the craft itself, but at the same time, the statement is also the logical consequence of a notion that defined the craft's birth. Simplifying the complex process of capturing a visual scene led to the more than three billion images that are published online on a daily basis, and it is no surprise that on average we spend around half of a second looking at an image. Taking the sheer numbers, the mass public clearly don’t see photographs anymore in a meaningful way, generally speaking. The vast majority of the moments of human interest that are captured through photographic means became data in order to generate more data.

As a result of that, photographs, and other digital visual creations too, are sold online as non-fungible tokens or NFTs. A process that involves no actual physical copy of an image as the digital image is transferred into a token as they are placed into a network of servers protected by the means of blockchain technology. The consumer no longer owns a photograph per se, but owns a chunk of data dumped into the endless realm of big data.

As the American photographer and artist Ralph Gibson said in a conversation with Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Leica Camera AG, “digital photography is another language than film photography”. Both have meaning and can be enjoyed, but in order to relate to each other, it is worth understanding the concept and premises of both.

Just as a tree will not be able to stand without its roots, meaningful improvements in photography can not happen without understanding or appreciating the craft's origin. As the human mind’s creativity is flourishing like never before in history, new means of self-expression and communicating ideas are popping up almost every day. Technology has reached such an advanced level, that there are almost no limits of what can be achieved, but in the process of perfecting solutions it is worth considering and remembering the centuries-old purpose of art, which is nothing else than to not lose one’s soul.

Connection At The Time of Lockdown

11th of May, 2020

To tackle the challenges of the 21st century, enhanced digital connection is imperative. In this blog post, I am making the case for a consumer grade, peer-to-peer broadcasting and media management solution that enhances currently available digital communication tools by better control features and improves on the limiting single-channel visual experience of video chats. When movement is restricted, as in a lockdown situation, we need digital communication tools that offer enhanced communication experiences and that effectively ease the stress caused by the lack of essential human interactions. The working title of this conceptual solution is “D-Connect”.

Depending on your global location, when reading this blog post you are likely spending your days in a COVID-19 lockdown or post-lockdown situation. Yet, regardless of the phases of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, our lives and human connections will be different once humanity gets out of the current limbo.

Scientists and health professionals had long been warning about the potential of a new animal-borne disease that may spread globally, kill many people and cause disruption in our life on a global scale. The way human psyche works, only the scriptwriters dreaming of blockbuster success were listening carefully, while most people ignored the warnings. As the old saying goes, “The unwise man learns only from his own mistake”. It is not for the first time in history that humanity did not listen to the warnings. Now we need to learn from our own mistake.

Bill Gates coined the term Pandemic 1 referring to COVID-19, as this monster is likely only the first of the many diseases that are predicted to be unleashing on humanity in the 21st century. The current lockdown challenges global cooperation and risk management capacities in an unprecedented way. We should all learn from the mistakes and prepare better for the almost unavoidable forthcoming lockdowns.

Besides the obvious health hazards of the COVID-19 virus, in the past months we had to learn not only that the global economy is unstable and vulnerable to the spread of a tiny virus, but that due to the globalized social structure we live in, human connections are sensitive too, and they can come almost to a standstill when a pandemic hits.

The image of staring at a digital screen and trying to stay connected with family and friends in the midst of the lockdown is a familiar experience for most of us. It is an ordinary human wish to keep in touch with loved ones to see they are doing OK, enjoy exciting conversations and provide relief on all sides. Yet, the currently available video chat applications, however amazing tools they are, are limited to a one-way experience in most cases, and fail to satisfy the basic needs of shared experience and collective reaction.

We are realizing that the quality of one of our most essential human necessities, connection with fellow human beings, depends on the available technologies when people have to obey social distancing rules in order to take care of their loved ones and unknown people alike. Yet, the feeling of “faraway, so close” can be reached. Since the 20th century, people have been connecting remotely by the use of telecommunication tools. In the 21st century these telecommunication tools became digital, but the fundamentals of their services remained analogue. To tackle the challenges of the 21st century, enhanced remote human connection experiences are imperative. Therefore, a new communication tool is needed in our daily lives. A purpose-built tool with the aim of providing the possibility of adequate human interactions. Welcome in the realm of multi-camera live broadcasting and file management through secure authentication.

Making a case for a consumer grade broadcasting and media management solution: “D-Connect”

The hardware: Multi-camera broadcasting

At this point you might ask, why multi-camera? My answer is that the current setting of video chatting resembles the set-up of an interrogation and not a constructive conversation. Gazing at each other through web-cameras is uncomfortable and tiring. It turns off our peripheral vision and offers tunnel vision in return, increasing the risk of getting easily distracted. During a video chat application a person is forced to process a tremendous amount of information in an artificially limited environment. A significant portion of this information has no context for the viewer, and thus the process of grasping true meaning requires extra effort and thus puts extra pressure on the viewer’s mental capacity. The current tools of video chatting are amazing help to stay connected on a basic level, but in case of an extended use, their technical approach is dysfunctional as they essentially disrupt cognitive functions.

The “D-Connect” set-up that uses at least two cameras for live streaming will not eradicate all concerns for a long term use of a video streaming communication tool, but can significantly ease the stress that a single camera set generates. Even with a very basic arrangement, a two camera set-up can help the viewer better understand and digest visual information, and can thus eliminate a good portion of the above described dysfunctions of currently available video chat applications.

The hardware part of this purpose-built tool, “D-Connect” shall comprise of at least two (wide-angle) cameras, a soap box sized mini computer that controls the cameras, and two screens to monitor the streaming and the connection. This tool can be built from already available, off-the-shelf consumer grade devices at the cost of around 550-600 USD.

The software

The software part of this purpose-built tool should provide freedom and better control over establishing a digital video connection and over the circumstances of the digital meet-up. Such control features are essential if we understand the responsibility that comes with digital media content, privacy and intellectual property rights.

Every person who uses any online platform to connect with other people and shares content is a media creator. In today’s digital world, sharing information is possible with the ease of one click, but this single click comes with responsibility as media content affects lives in the short and the long run. Effective use of online media can change the direction of a discussion within society, and potentially the course of history. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we learned that the misuse of online media, or the uneducated use of online media, can be as lethal as a gun. This is why every user, being a media creator, has to grasp the significance of their media content. If we want to live up to the potential of what the online world presents, media literacy, just as computer literacy, should be part of basic education. More-over, users should be able to have more effective control over their own media content.

If we accept the concept of basic human rights and responsibilities in the online world, then it is obvious that enhanced digital communication should not happen through a third party service or platform, but in an environment in which the participants control authentication in a secure manner.

The software part of my conceptual tool, “D-Connect”, is a communication and media platform that can provide streaming services combined with digital media asset management solutions at scale. The services and functions would provide the user with options to control secure authentication and privacy, while complying with GDPR and international copyright protection laws. The “D-Connect” tool would provide adequate digital solutions during lockdown and in other circumstances when movement is restricted; it would cater for businesses that otherwise depend on meeting people and gathering at the same physical location.

Conclusion

If you succeeded reading up to this point, you could learn that I am making a case for an independent, easy-to-use, peer-to-peer online broadcasting platform that is combined with digital media asset management solutions. All made from already existing off-the-shelf, consumer grade hardware. My intention with this case is to enhance the digital communication tools we have at the moment, and to prepare for the challenges of tomorrow.

The consumer grade version of “D-Connect” tool that I have presented here could almost be immediately available without extended research and development, and has the potential to increase the pace of digital transition, in – especially, but not limited to – the fields of education and health care.

The world entered the 21st century with an army of amazing tools to connect. They are designed to support our daily lives, but it was the life we knew prior to COVID-19. Entire value chains, industries and human relations have been put on hold until science finds the cure for the COVID-19 virus, causing unprecedented disruption to the global economy. Sadly, we have also had to learn that it is not only the deadly virus that kills during a global pandemic, but the mental stress caused by the lack of essential human interactions can take human lives too. As Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister put it in a recent interview on CNBC “a healthy economy requires healthy people, and healthy people require a healthy economy”. It is a balancing act with the ultimate risk. It is naive to think that people could actively participate in the challenges of the 21st century without efficient digital means of human connection.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse