Scott Prints

We often think about things in our life that are made easier and maybe better by technology. We reflect on the glory days of having to do something by hand and the skills that generations will never obtain in the lost arts made obsolete by advances in the world.

The skills themselves that are no longer needed to achieve desired outcomes may not be important to the end result in this day in age, but understanding the difficulty and beauty of the process helps develop the appreciation of how far we have come, and the skill of those who proceeded us.

People often lament over the lack of skill or work ethic that newer generation have, because of missed experiences and undeveloped skill sets no longer needed. But that criticism probably can be made about every generation by the previous. We hold on to the skills and knowledge that we work a lifetime to develop and master, and dismiss and ignore the people that advance past us on the road paved by our hard work.

We should be excited and proud of the opportunity that we have provided the future, as it is the same opportunity that we took advantage of as we came of age. New technologies made previous master level skills common place, those advances become the stepping stone for the next skills to be mastered.

A digital photographer will never do what Ansel Adam’s achieved. Their work will never be comparable in the same way that made Adams work so amazing, but what he achieved and what we have developed because of his hard work will allow future generations to achieve something greater. His relevance today speaks loudly to his achievements, his extrodinary ability and hard work.

“Phone photography” isn’t the same as what Ansel Adams created, at some point the results maybe as technically beautiful, but only at that point will we be at the base camp of what digital photography can accomplish. Until then, we will develop tangents of greatness/new accomplishments never before possible and use those achievements to develop the new art.