This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
dents who come to love it. For everyone else it will just be point the phone, tweet the pho- to, and forget it. I presume a new era is com- ing — digitized, bargainized, simplified, and cheapanized.”


Sharing Photos


In 1997 Steve surmised “It remains to be seen exactly how this (digital photography) will translate to situations where you need to show your photos to large groups of people. It may be hard to believe, but the advent of digital pho- tography could spell the end to the railfan slide show. Digital images will be geared to viewing on computer monitors or televisions.” Most photographers across all disciplines now use digital projection. Computers, iPads and cell phones come with slide show func- tions, and laptops let you present a show on your computer monitor, a projector or a TV. Members of one of the large camera clubs I belonged to voted to judge contest images by digital projection. Railfan expos like Win- terail and Summerail have gone to digital presentations on a very big screen. The biggest drawback in switching to digital pro- jection is the need to integrate older slides with newer digital shots, not a quick nor seamless transition if you have thousands of slides, and you need a scanner and image processing program. But an advantage is you can now also scan and include prints in a show. Today, many fans use their web sites, e- mail and social media to share photos. With some digital cameras and cell phones, you can be sharing your latest photo(s) in mere minutes with fellow railfans or magazine editors several states away, at times while the train is still passing your location! (Maybe a CAMERA BAG author two genera- tions in the future will be writing about how an implanted chip transmits with brain waves what our eyes see to a computer to produce a photo, or be transmitted to chips implanted in someone else, with no need for a camera or even for computers or projectors to share a railfan image show!)


Digital Fears In 2007 I wrote, “If you have used computers very much, you know files can be corrupted or lost, and hard drives and DVD discs can fail, wiping out all your photos in an instant for a variety of reasons and without warn- ing.” The real fear here is that you do not have any “photos” to get wiped out, just a conglomeration of unseen 1s and 0s sitting on a magnetic disc. Consider also that a fire, tornado, or flood can wipe out all your film images. It is much too impractical to have back up duplicates made of all your film im- ages, while backing up digital images is easy. Still, this uneasiness about digital per- sists, albeit now receding into the back of most photographers’ minds. Yet familiarity breeds complacency, so do not forget that what I wrote in my 2007 ar- ticle is still true today: “. . .it is mandatory that you utilize a multiple copy back-up sys- tem on different types of storage media. . . , that can be kept in other locations (in the event of a disaster in your home.”) And now, of course, we have “the Cloud.”


Steve expressed another oft-heard fear in


1997, about digitally creating something that did not actually exist: “Railroad photog- raphy has been to a large extent simply doc- umenting the rail scene. Soon, though, we’ll be able to change our photos. . . We can re-


move telephone poles from roster shots, which may not seem like a bad thing. The sky isn’t blue enough? You can make it baby blue and add a puffy cloud for good measure. The Southern Pacific engine is too dirty? For that matter, you can renumber it or repaint it into Atlantic Coast Line colors. . . This is where we may start to encroach into ‘photo- graphic ethics,’ for lack of a better name.” The ethics of digital photo manipulating


may seem a simple right or wrong issue, but it can all depend on one’s point of view. A century ago it was accepted practice for pro- fessional photographers to draw in billowing smoke where there was none, or even strip in a photo of a train from another location. Conversely, users of early enlargers were criticized for “altering reality” by simply cropping out part of a negative. Manipula- tion to create an image that did not actually occur is now common in fine art and adver- tising photography, movie special effects, and portrait photographers “remove” blem- ishes digitally. Is it not okay to digitally make a sky bluer, when it was common prac- tice to do this with a polarizer on our film camera? While today no railfan would ap- prove of totally creating a scene that does not exist, some mild manipulation if appro- priate seems to be accepted. A reader asked on R&R’s Facebook why Photoshop was not used to remove offensive graffiti seen on the cover of the May 2013 R&R? Certainly this would be appropriate. (Editor’s note: Yes, it would have been appropriate had we seen it before we went to press. —S.B.)


My railfan friend mentioned earlier does not like extreme computer manipulation that distorts reality, but did want a framed print of my “Moon Over the Southern” photo created with a multiple exposure on film (see April 2013 CAMERA BAG). While manipulated im- ages should never be published unless clearly noted as such, is not creating a dramatic print in this manner to frame perfectly okay? Or how about as a “spoof?” A photo on page 56 of March 2013 R&R showing a Pennsylvania


Railroad GG1 in Norfolk


Southern lettering is a digital “modification” to go along with a column in that issue on rumors. But it is clearly labeled “This is not real.” R&R’s policy on manipulated digital images being presented as real for a contest is also stated in that same issue on page 57: “Do not add or remove elements that were or were not actually in the scene as photographed.”


Has Anything Really Changed? In 1997 Steve wrote “Simply put, the images produced by a digital camera don’t have the resolution — they aren’t as sharp — as those produced by today’s 35mm cameras.” But to- day, digital quality pretty well transcends that of film. Outdoor Photographer maga- zine editors feel that digital imagery being inferior to film is “not remotely the case to- day,” and “. . . digital cameras can deliver de- tail and dynamic range beyond the capabili- ties of film.” My own experience has proven that even a 6mp APS-C size DSLR can match the quality of a 35mm negative in en- largements as big as 16×20 inches, which is about the limit for 35mm film. But despite all the ease and high technology of digital photography, we still need to understand how light and shadow, apertures and shut- ter speeds combine to make a nice photo. The bottom line: Digital has changed the practice of railfan photography, mainly for the better.


15


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