Remediation/Post #1

With our fast-paced growth in technology today, it is easy to point out a lot of the different remediations that have happened even in just the past 5-10 years. The pace at which the world is inventing, updating, and creating has gotten faster and faster as time has gone on. The remediation that comes to mind for me, considering I'm a photographer, is the remediation of cameras/photos.

When cameras first came about you had to put a huge dark cloth over your head to even be able to take the photo because absolutely no light could get on the film. Soon journalism required photographers to move around with the camera so they had to find a way to make the film covered and light resistant while inside the camera. Extra light was needed, so giant flashes were invented. The kind you've probably seen in movies where the big giant light bulb on top of the giant camera explodes and breaks all over the floor.

As time went on cameras became smaller and smaller, and more and more computerized. Now, no one hardly even uses film anymore (which is super sad in my opinion). Everything used to capture video, sound, or pictures is digitalized, and much easier to use than back in the "old" days when everything was manual, and you actually had to create the photo yourself step by step. Now cameras have at least 8-10 different settings on them depending on where you are and what you're taking a picture of. In fact if you are just taking a basic picture you don't even really have to think when you take pictures anymore since you can just put it on the "portrait" setting, or close up/ far away setting and instantly view the photo after it is taken. No film wasted, no time wasted, no effort needed.

The real remediation of photography however is the use of photoshop.
Anyone, anywhere, who can buy a camera can be a photographer. And if you find you don't like the photo, you can take it into iphoto, photoshop, and whatever simpleton PC editing programs there are out there..(mac all the way) to tweak it to your own liking. In fact, when you see photos in magazines, newspapers, and even reality TV shows, how is anyone supposed to know that photo is real and not manipulated? no one can settle for anything that is not manipulated much anymore, and the way our society has reformed to that is basically if someone sees a photo that isn't manipulated, next to one that is with super cool graphics, and effects, and everything they will definitely more often than not pick the manipulated one. To some people manipulating photos on a computer is art. To me, making photos with chemicals, and your hands in a dark room for hours is art.

However, the point is, society likes to see photos that are out of the ordinary. Things they don't normally see, colors that don't always occur in real nature, people and animals that look freaky, and people and things that are much more glamoured up and glorified looking. That catches peoples eye. However if the photo shows colors they are used to, and the way people actually look in real life, its a boring photo.