What does Ritchin mean with the “fluidity of the digital”? Give an example of digital imaging/digital photography that exemplifies this.
Fluidity of digital here shows the modifiability of photographs today, which indicates that people can add, remove or do other changes to some part of the photo whenever they would like to. No matter color, resolution, aperture, or exposure, things that sounds blocked by technique difficulty in the past become a expressing method or medium now. I think one example could be the current trend of doing high-definition restoration of old photos and videos, enhancing color effect of black and white photos, which helps bring them up to date, seemingly developing as well.
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).
Personally, I take the very initial function and reason for photography as capturing reality, as a supply of traditional painting. However, ever since the introduction of the first camera, its function also changed over the years. One of the most crucial change might be: the slight shift of the focus or judgement of a photo, e.g. a little off the very strict pursuit of the reality of a photo. I don’t find any reason to say only a photo with no edit history can be considered nice, partly because the invention of ps actually came from people’s needs for good looking photos. In this case, I think people’s need is the initial motivation of the birth of ps, while the technique part only play the role as a necessary tool which provides the possibility of it.