1. The inherent duality of domestic photography that is mentioned in the text relates to directly relates to studium and punctum. The duality exists between the separate meanings that accompany certain photographs in the minds of certain people. For some, a photograph may be boring an carry no particular meaning and spark no particular interests in them(studium). For others, a picture may evoke personal and private emotions and memories (punctum).
2. Researching the history of technology is of great importance when researchers want to understand how photography works. It is imperative to study and interpret the past in order to predict and decide the future. The article backs up this claim by saying that studying history allows for “thinking outside the box”. They explain with the fact that what basically was a touch screen smartphone had been achieved and invented by BellSouth’s SImon, over ten years before the release of Apple’s first iPhone that blew everyone’s minds. No one knows this, because no one has done the research. They say “every technology has a legacy”. If someone wants to know all about photography, they have to look at the past, see what has been done, and then determine what will be done, or what can be done in the future.
3. This method this study uses is laying out a plan in the introduction telling the readers that they will identify three paths in the history of domestic photography, and how they all followed the same course. They call the paths: the Portrait Path (ca. 1830s-1888), the Kodak Path (ca. 1888-1990s), and the Digital Path (starting in the 1990s). Each path is said to have the same structure, beginning with an innovation that did not fall in line with the status quo of technologies at the time. These new innovations created a disruption, which further led to an era of ferment, as the new technology competes against the old. Eventually, the technology is accepted, or molded into something that becomes accepted, and a dominant design is formed.
4. My won experience with photography includes pretty much all aspects of the domestic photography discussed in the text. I have taken part in family photography, as one of the subjects, and as the photographer. My experience with family photography that is posed and structured to perfection is limited, but I have taken part in many casual family photos. I have also taken part in snapshot photography, which I have taken to mean the exact same thing as being the photographer in family photography, except for the distinction that in this case I am a member of the family I am capturing.
5. Punctum is the personal feelings and emotions you have when presented with a photograph. Punctum is what triggers certain memories when you look at an image.
6. The six practical effects form the shift of film to digital photography: “photographs can be stored in minimal physical space, there are hardly any costs for capturing thousands of images, images can be copied without loss of quality, they can be transferred over information networks over enormous distances in a very short time, they can be edited and manipulated in ways previously unimaginable, and they can be displayed immediately after capture on a variety of screen types”. The ability to display photos immediately on a variety of screens is probably the most beneficial for my project.
7. I agree that we are currently in an era of ferment simply because of the constant growth of photography and the small enhancements that are consistently made by various companies trying to outdo each other. At the same time, there is a dominant design, that takes place in these smartphones. At the same time, there seem to be no limits on the improvements of digital photography. We can do so much today with photography on our smartphones, with impressive photo quality and access to easy photo editing. I have no idea what the future holds in terms of digital photography, or possibly an entirely new fourth path.
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