What does Ritchin mean with the “fluidity of the digital”?
According to Ritchin, different from traditional photography which uses film to restore images, the digital images used pixels, bring the “fluidity of the digital”. As a media, the pixels enable mainly 2 kinds of fluidities for the digital: the fluidity of editing and the fluidity of sharing. Firstly, the digital format makes it easier for people to edit. With the development of information technology, the threshold for editing images is getting lower and lower – different from the traditional method, when the film is hard to modify. Secondly, the development of the internet and smart devices such as phone makes it more convenient for people to share, while decades ago, photos can only be printed in order to be shared.
Nothing could be more common than sharing photos in WeChat moments for Chinese citizens. For most of the people, “shooting – editing – post” seems to be a “standard process”. While the “beauty” function is being widely used, people also favor different filters, stickers, and text styles. The shooting itself turned to be less important since the editing and posting process attracts people as well.
Which photography is capable of capturing reality?
In the book, the author stresses the importance of photography as a kind of media showing reality. He believes that as our eyes capture the real world, cameras can also inherit their function. But with the easier and easier methods of editing the photos, he also shows some concerns and worries.
Compared to texts and books, I believe photos can show more reality since texts and books are completely written by humans with subjective minds. But compared to videos, since videos are harder to edit, when we are not considering the resolution problem (since generally photos capture more details and pixels compared to the frames in the videos), videos show more reality. That’s also why in the field of criminal investigation, videos are more convincing than photos. But, as technology improves, I suppose it would be much harder to retain and distinguish reality form the digital files.