- What does Ritchin mean with the “fluidity of the digital”? Give an example of digital imaging/digital photography that exemplifies this.
Ritchin mentioned these words when he said “the fidelity of the mechanical was being replaced by the fluidity of the digital”. From my perspectives, with the technology developing people can use some technological methods to modify pictures, such as photoshops. When changing the elements in the photos, people broke the reality recorded in the photo.
For example, people can hide blemishes of their outlook to make them look more beautiful. This is the simplest situation. What is more serious is that someone may use photo modifying technology to spread rumors or even erase a person’s existence.
There is another condition is that some photographers will set a scene and play it just like what a director usually do when taking movies. The scene showed is not the reality, but what the photographer wants the audience to see.
This photo shoes how adult bird feeds its children, but actually since baby bird can’t fly they usually stay in the nest instead of standing on the smooth branch which is highly dangerous.So baby birds in this photo is placed on the branch by the photographer. And someone even ties the birds on the branch so they won’t fall off. It’s not an encouraged behavior, but it’s common in bird shooting.
2.Reflect on the extent to which photography is capable of capturing reality; and compare it to other media (technology) (e.g. text, video, virtual reality, books).
I think photography can capture the reality when it correspond to the following situation:(1)the photo presented to the audience has never been modified. (2)things in the photo is what really happened, which means it’s not a scene elaborately arranged by the photographer. If so, at least, the photograph take its responsibility to present the reality. As for what information the audience get from the photo, it’s actually the issue about understanding rather than presenting.
In comparison with other media, photography seems to be more real than texts, book, and other media that is only composed by words. These media can be easily affected by the writer’s emotion, stand, or writing ability, so they tend to be subjective inevitably, losing the possibility to present the 100% truth. Photos, though slight, it still keep some chances to achieve it.