The “fluidity of the digital” means that photographers can feel free to modify the photograph and other digital media to reach their own needs. Photographers are no longer just the recorder of real life, they can edit and manipulate the photographs to make them present in various ways.
One typical example would be photo-editing applications. In order to achieve a certain goal, many people use such app to beautify pictures to the largest extent, ignoring the fact that they have changed the essence of the photo. The one on the right is the type that we usually see as a promotional photo, but its origination is the left picture. The beauty of the sea is fluid. By using beauty apps, those not attractive pictures become attractive, which can mislead and deceive people then gain benefit from this.
When comparing the capacity of capturing reality, I think virtual reality and video are better than photography and photography is better than book and text.
Compared with text and book, photography can better capture the reality for it can automatically present a vivid image for readers and can omit the procedure that readers try to imagine the image in their mind. Also, images taken by photo are absolutely more realistic than images in mind.
The reason video is better than photography is that video is composed of countless images, which can present people with images from different angles. Virtual reality is much better than video, for it can create three-dimension images while a video can only create two-dimension images, which can give the reader an immersive feeling.
However, the comparison has an exception. In terms of recording time, photography is the worst compared with the other four media. The other four can all capture the moment in a time period while photography can only record a time point.