Digital photography is less than twenty years old, which makes it one of the newest art forms on the planet. Because it is so new, the standards of what can separate the good digital photos from the bad are still being made. This is an exciting time for those who love digital photography, because they can help shape the artistic aesthetics of generations to come.

Is It Real Photography?

There will always be purists who will decry digital photography as not being “real photography”. Some artists and critics think that traditional film photography has a depth and beauty that digital photography cannot match…yet.

If photography is defined as the art of making still images to show some truth about the world, then it really shouldn’t matter what medium is used to make than image. Traditional photography captures images on film. Digital photography captures images in binary data. Sometimes this gives the digital images a blockier look, as if it was captured from a television screen rather than from real life.

But digital photography has advantages over film photography. With digital photography, you can store many more images on your computer or on ofoto web site albums rather than bulky albums of film photos. Digital photos don’t age as fast as traditional film photos. And you can do some editing tricks that are impossible in traditional film photography.

Don’t Believe All You See

Because images are stored as binary data on your compute, you can blow up the image and edit it. Many digital photography programs allow you to change colors and shading. But, more importantly, they can seamlessly transfer one image to another. Many trick photos using film photography look fake – on closer inspection, you can see where one image was physically pasted over another. But in digital photography, the eye is fooled into believing what you see.

In one example popular over the internet among guinea pig lovers in the late 1990’s, was a very convincing photo of Queen Elizabeth II holding a cushion where a giant green guinea pig was sitting on it. The guinea pig even cast shadows! The shade of green was so light and the photo so convincing that for a moment you could believe that somehow light green giant guinea pigs had been successfully bred in Britain and then went to go visit the Queen.

Digital photography promises to take creativity to a new level, as long as the digital photographers reveal that the images are works of self-expression and not the literal truth.