The recent discovery of Robert Capa‘s negatives and pending auction of Edward Weston‘s work got me thinking about history. Not in general but in terms of photography and one’s personal tie to it. With the changing of the medium I’m curious how history will work out. Will we ever discover a suitcase full of hard drives that weren’t quadruple backed up somewhere?

What about the masses devoid of ever spinning a role of film through a camera and waiting for days to see the results. Are we simply changing tools or are we changing vision? Is there more to history than what we imagine at this point in time?

I know my tie has been fortunate. Like it or not I was in the darkroom, I inhaled. And I’ll never forget running slide film to the lab and having them imprint someone else’s copyright on my images. Talk about a loss of control. The subsequent transition to digital wasn’t that big a deal. An investment maybe but a needed step in the evolution of the medium.

I always wanted to be one of the photographers in interviews that could simply say, “I’ve known I’d be be a photographer since I was three.” Truth is, however, that nothing was that clear for me. Grade school I remember thinking I would be an astronaut hands down. Took me a long time to come around to realizing that the fascination I have with visual media could be backed up with a proper business.

Came across this image of my grandpa Art lately (thanks mom) and was good to see that I did pickup a camera as a kid. “Heath took this picture all by himself – Dec 17 1978.” I was almost five then. I don’t remember it as being pivotal in my career – I don’t remember it at all. Does this count as history? Did it start the fire? Where is photography going and what is our history going to look like? Is it important?

For anyone still doubting the power of processors and pixels to affect our collective view of the world here is yet more evidence. As if the old Dove video isn’t enough here’s a slightly more tech approach to the ongoing issue of resizing images to fit not only the various monitor formats but the plehtora of media devices pushing images in general.

This is a cool outside the box approach to what we all bump into at times. Rather than working purely in a linear approach the engineers (props folks) have managed to work in non uniform columns. That is they have worked out an method for determining the importance of pixels to the overall image and then removing those deemed the least vital in the spectrum of the picture.

Great to see what’s ahead and that as much as manipulation, and at times deceit, play a role in visual media today that tools are being developed that push the envelope of what we as photographers would all hope for. I can see this technology and the face recognition used within being extremely useful. Let me know when you see this out in use.