Problems with Digital Imaging

Problems with Digital Imaging

“A picture is worth a thousand words”, Barnard, 1921. A critical use of images is for communications[1]. Images convey details and illustrate a specific scene in ways words could never do. People navigate the world primarily through sight, we can garner a great deal of information from just a glance. For hundreds of years, man made images, images created for a purpose to either illustrate a scene or capture a moment were done in the forms of paintings. These were basic to start, but improved with each passing year. Not too long after, there were a multitude of art styles, paintings who’s images were distorted, and strange, like those of Monet, and Picasso, but their purpose was not to capture the image as it were, but as they saw it, those painters were trying to show their audience a new way of looking at things. Photography entered the scene around the early 1800s, the first successful picture was produced in 1827 by Niepce[2].

Photographs historically have not been treated with the same attitude as paintings. Photographs are regarded as snapshots in time, faithfully recreating with unbiased attention to every detail in the scene, credible enough to be admissible as evidence in court. Fast forward to modern times, and with the advent of computers and digital imaging, the artistic expression of paintings has been merged with the unbiased realism of photographs to create realistic artistic expressions. No longer are artists limited to having to create images from scratch using their bare hands, and no longer are photographers limited to images only capture-able in the real world. But with great power, comes great responsibility, this is not a technology which should be taken lightly. Unchecked it would lead to mischief. Suffocate the technology, and you could be infringing on people’s right to free speech and artistic expression.

Already the use of digital imaging has created great controversy. Ford Motor Company is in hot water over a series of television commercials depicting animals being mistreated by the advertised car, most notably one of a cat being decapitated with the sunroof of a hatchback[3]. The adult entertainment industry is usually always on the fore front of technology, and no doubt, always under fire for their use of technology. In this case, the use of digital imaging to create simulated child pornography.