What's old is new, in the digital age.

I thought about titling this blog something like "Old dogs, new tricks," but that's not really an accurate description of where I'm headed with today's thought. There are a lot of us old dogs still snapping photos like we've done for years, but the digital age has changed what comes next. Before, we would have taken our film rolls to the darkroom to try out different methods to expose our vision; today, we take our electrons to the digital darkroom to create our artwork. The tricks aren't new... there's just a new way of implementing them.

From the very beginning of photography, artists have used different techniques after the shutter snapped to achieve the desired results for their photographs. In what we call post-production (or PP) today, photogs would spend hours in the darkroom with chemicals, emulsions and solutions bathing their negatives under different lights for varying lengths of time to produce different visual effects. Frenchman, Armand Sabattier, developed what is known today as "solarization" (more accurately, the technique is called the Sabattier effect) in 1862 . Legendary photographer, Man Ray, took the technique to new heights in the 1920's and 1930's.

By the 1960's, many photographic artists were experimenting with darkroom processing techniques, including cross-processing (that is, processing one type of film in chemicals intended for a different type of film) to achieve creative results with their photography. Dodging (reducing the light hitting specific parts of an image) and burning (increasing the light) techniques were commonplace.

Though commonplace by the modern era of film, these techniques were still very time consuming and labor intensive. The techniques for achieving artistic results had improved, but still, the results were often hit or miss. The outcome depended on the input. One image might work perfectly processed one way, while another image may not work at all with a particular technique, aesthetically speaking.

Then came the digital age. Fast forward through the early iterations of digital imagery to today, and you now have the tools that photographic artists toiled over for years right at the tips of your fingers. Using your computer and imaging software, you can create the same photographic effects in minutes, or even seconds, that once took days. The same solarization effects, dodging, burning, and cross-processing techniques have been captured by mathematicians and programmers and turned into the image editing software we can all access today.

Film purists (and there are still some among us) might contend that the old techniques should stay in the darkroom, but I believe, as an artist, that taking advantage of the new virtual darkroom is the way to go. I can produce similar results in seconds; my results are repeatable; and I don't have to expose myself (yeah, I said it) to hazardous, smelly chemicals that most probably shortened the life span of some of our photographic forefathers.

So go ahead and post-produce your digital images, and do so without guilt. Do you think we'd remember Man Ray today for the photographs he produced right out of the camera? No. His post-production techniques are what made him a memorable artist. The pioneers of photography paved the way for us, but it's up to us to press forward with a new vision of the future in the digital age.