What has changed in photography, and what is the same?

I have been a photographer for a long time. My dad was a keen amateur photographer and he built a darkroom in the coal cellar when I was a child. My favorite memories of him involve the smell of developer and the magic of seeing the pictures we had taken that very day, appear on paper. I was thinking, recently, about how much photography has changed since my childhood, and how much remains the same. 

I bought my first digital camera in 2001, seeking to regain some of the control I felt back in the dark room with my Dad.  Even though digital photography was fairly new, at least on the consumer level, I loved being back in the driver's seat! Today's new photographers take for granted the ability to take hundreds of photos and only keep the ones they like. Take a picture of any small child and they will immediately ask to see the back of the camera. 

So what has changed and what is the same? More people take photographs but fewer print them. The method of recording photographs has changed out of all recognition but a photograph is still "light writing" in the meaning of the original word. Despite the frequent charge that manipulated images are not real photos, Ansel Adams did a considerable amount of manipulation in the darkroom to produce his amazing finished images! Today, we use a computer and software to correct and manipulate our images, instead of smelly and dangerous chemicals but a lot of the techniques are similar. Photoshop uses the darkroom terms "dodge' and "burn" for lightening and darkening areas of an image, and the size of a modern image sensor is based on the dimensions of older film technology. 

From the days of the first cave paintings, humans have had the urge to record their experiences. Don't be so quick to write photography off as a dying art now that it is easily accessible to the masses! What you can create is only limited by your imagination!