Reactions to Fred Ritchen's Writing

 In Ritchen's first paragraph of "Toward a Hyperphotography" he states, "Eventually, digital photography's relationship to space, to time, to light, to authorship, to other media will make it clear the it represents an essentially different approach than does analog photography..." This paragraph is the perfect way to open up this chapter. I appreciate how it gives some background information on what hyperphotography is. I have never heard of this term and this paragraph makes me intrigued to learn more, which is exactly what an opening paragraph should accomplish. I agree strongly with his first sentence. I have experience in both film and digital photography and they are completely different. The images I produced on film versus my digital work express very different meanings.

The paragraph on page 142 that starts with "It is also, unlike almost all of analog photography..." is important to note. I believe that this paragraph does a wonderful job of summarizing the beauty and ease of digital photography. It describes how immediate the results are. In analog photography, you aren't able to know how well composed and effective your images are until you start the developing process. The beauty of digital photography is that you can instantly capture moments in time and have that memory physically tangible forever. This paragraph also points out the ability to take screenshots of other individuals images. This allows the spread of news and memories to happen at a much quicker pace. I think its pretty amazing that we are able to instantly share out favorite moments with family, friends, and strangers and that's all thanks to digital photography.

The paragraph under the subtitle "Photographing the Future so a version of It Does Not Happen" on page 149, is an interesting view on this topic that I haven't thought of before. It is explaining the ability to predict future events using rendered digital images. It describes how this process can prevent bad events from happening. I love this point that Rithcen included. It gets me thinking about all of the possible horrible things that our world could've endured but didn't due to photography. He also points out that this is impossible to do with analog photography because the photos that film produces are strictly of the past. 

 

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