By Wayne Cosshall

Photography is a technological discipline. It always has been. Indeed there is nothing new about the current rapid pace of change in the technology of photography. It has happened many times before in the history of photography. What is also not new is the cry of people convinced that the latest technological change is the end of photography. I’ve been in photography long enough to remember when similar calls of alarm were expressed about 35mm, auto-exposure cameras, auto-focus cameras, the drop in availability of large-format films, motor drives and now digital cameras.

Exactly the same thing happened on the print end of the photographic process. In my photographic lifetime I’ve seen rapid change in BW papers, C-41 color papers for printing from negatives, Cibachrome for printing from slides, and various other processes. I’ve also witnessed the emergence of digital technologies, including inkjet, toner-based systems (electrophotographic printing), and laser-based imaging paired with chemical photoprocessing (Durst, Lightjet, etc.). Plus, I’ve seen all of the old processes come back into fashion.

In photography, nothing seems to ever really go away. Any decent camera has manual focus and exposure options should you want to use them (as I do a lot). Likewise, digital cameras have not made film disappear and inkjet has not eradicated chemical photographic papers. The old printing processes are around and doing well. Indeed these have evolved to mix the old and the new. For example, some people print digital negatives on their inkjet printers from Photoshop and then contact print onto gum bichromate coated paper. A few processes virtually disappear because of their danger or impracticality (who wants to boil mercury to process metal plates?), but only a few.

Great scanners are now available at amazingly low prices compared to five or ten years ago. This makes a mixed analog/digital workflow very practical, especially if you want to continue to use your archives of photos you shot in the past. Or, you can choose to shoot film, get it processed (or do it yourself) and then use a digital process from that point on--scanning the negatives (or slides) on either a dedicated film scanner or one of the great flatbed scanners with film capability.

Although the number of available film stocks has dropped, a number have also recently resurfaced and new ones continue to crop up occasionally, giving us confidence that film isn’t going away anytime soon. I recently dusted off my remaining medium-format gear and am using it for some very long exposure photography.

There is no need to fear that technological change will dilute your hard-earned photography skills. Good knowledge of lighting and exposure didn’t become useless with the arrival of auto-exposure cameras, and the same is true across the whole range of photographic skills. Many skills can still be directly applied to each new development in photography technology (exposure is exposure, after all). Other skills can serve as a starting point for new direction. For example, you can apply your experience with coating art papers for cyanotype to laying inkjet-receptive layers on aluminum sheet or applying a UV-resistant coating to an inkjet print. And, whether you are viewing an analog or digital print, you will still judge its quality by examining its tonality, color and sharpness.

Photography offers so many options and choices—far more today than yesterday. You can choose a fully digital or fully analog workflow or combine elements of both. Or, you can mix very old processes with the very latest techniques.

All this offers you a huge opportunity to find the process (or processes) that work best for the type(s) of photography you do and your personal vision of how it should look. Enjoy, explore and create.