I think what Ritchin meant by “fluidity of the digital” is how essay it for us to access a camera, take a picture and manipulate it. Today we have a camera with us almost everywhere we go. When we want to take a picture, we just take out our phone and take as many pictures as we want. In the past, there is limit to how many pictures people can take due to the type of camera they have. Nowadays, photography is so flexible and so much easier to just manipulate it.
One example of digital imaging is Photoshop. In the past, there is no photoshop so if people want to take a picture in a crowded place, they will have to spend time waiting for the crowds to go away. Now with the power of photoshop, no matter how many people there are, photoshop will help remove everyone out. It will create things that isn’t there before and no one will notice because it looks so real. Due to this, sometimes we don’t know if everything in the photograph is real or not.
I think video is more capable of capturing reality than photograph because everything in videos is moving, such as all the facial expression and body gestures. Even though photograph is a common way that people use to capture the moment, but unlike videos, photograph doesn’t have sound. People can fake a reality through photograph but it’s hard to fake a reality through videos unless the people there are good at acting. In the videos, the sound and the movement really bring out the real reality than photograph does. When I watched past videos, I feel like it pulls me in more than photograph does. I assume it’s also harder to photoshop a video than in photograph because things are moving in a video, whereas everything in photograph are still.