In the parlance of an all-encompassing book, Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography is more of a Bible than anything else. It begins with the history of digital photography. This is something that the author feels is often overlooked, but nonetheless important to the understanding of the digital landscape. He then takes us through the process and workflow of the digital image artist. He then finishes with thoughts about the importance of honesty and ethics in the digital world.
This topic of ethics is clearly important to the author and I share that interest. In this day and age, it is too easy to change images to perform the task of manipulation. While, from an artistic standpoint, there is nothing wrong with this, the artist must be honest with their audience and let them know that something has been changed. As well, the viewer of an image must be skeptical that this may not be reality. I like one of Stephen's guide lines for the ethics of digital images. The basic tenant is that as long as you do not add something to the image or take something away from the image.
Stephen Johnson is an internationally recognized digital pioneer who specializes in landscape photography. He has taught photography since 1977, both at the college level as well as in his own workshop programs. He is a consultant for clients such as Kodak, Epson, Foveon and Hewlett-Packard as well as with Adobe on the development of Photoshop. In 2003 he was inducted into the Photoshop hall of fame.
It is hard task to try to describe the evolutions of digital photography, entwine it with an explanation of the technology, and describe the building of a digital process, but Johnson does it with the same master's touch he brings to his photographic images.
While he includes how-to segments on controlling the digital image, scanning, printing and archiving he does it with the eye of a teacher. He provides the right balance for the beginner who wants to move to the next level as well as for the journeyman who wants to make the transition from film to a frontier.
Article comments
1 - John Lindquist
It would be nice if he reviewer would write something about Johnson's life-where educated, etc.