The future of photography

Abstract

ABSTRACT We are just a few years away from celebrating the 200 th anniversary of photography. The first permanent photographic record was made by Niepce in 1826, the view from his window at Le Gras. After many development cycles, including some periods of stagnation, photography is now experience an amazing period of growth. Change since the mid 90’s going into the next several years will completely modify photography and its industry. We propose that the digital photography revolution can be divided into two phases. The first, from about 1994 to 2009, was primarily the transformation of film-based equipment into their digital count erparts. Now, in the second phase, photography is starting to change into something completely different, with forces like social networks, cell phone cameras and computational photography changing the business, the methods and the use of photographs. Keywords: Photography, Trends, Future, Technology, Post-Digital 1. INTRODUCTION Digital photography has now become just photography, no need anymore to specify if film or digital based. Film is the exception, still romanticized by many, but practiced by dwin dling few. The transition that started some 15 years ago is now complete, and we find ourselves almost in the same place we started, but ready to embark into a new era. The change to digital has been hugely be neficial to photography, prope lling it into higher levels of quality and popularity due to improved ease of use and new capabilities. The came ra itself has changed little superficially, and camera shelves of today’s photo store are populated with SLR and point-and-shoot models that look very much like those of 20 years ago. The major revolution in camera format is not for display on the shelves, but inside people’s pockets, embedded into our cell phones, the first really new photographic platform in many years.