Reality Check
The Future of Photography
In 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre introduced the daguerreotype, which could capture an instant in time on a light-sensitive, silver-coated copper plate. Twenty years later, Daguerre's method was made obsolete by the invention of the negative/positive process still used in modern photography. Since then, we've become accustomed to the instant gratification of Polaroid prints, the perpetual annoyance of red eye, and the ecologically questionable convenience of disposable cameras. We've seen the death of some formats – Kodak's Disc Camera, for example – while others, like stereoscopic cameras, can be found only in dusty kitsch bins. And then – there's Photoshop. Wired asked four experts to frame the future of photography.
| Digital Cameras Outsell 35mm | Digital Watermark Catches On | Holographic Cameras for Consumers | "Altered" Symbol Becomes Standard
| Gustin | 2010 | 2000 | 2001 | 2006
| McCabe | 1999 | 1997 | 2012 | 1998
| Nagel | 2005 | 1997 | 2030 | unlikely
| Smolan | 2002 | 1998 | 2010 | unlikely
| Bottom Line | 2004 | 1998 | 2013 | unlikely
Digital PHD (push here, dummy) cameras are already available, but high prices and low resolution don't make for pretty pictures. While our experts agree the technology will improve and prices will drop, Gustin thinks that for digital consumer cameras to take off, the middleman – namely, the personal computer – must disappear. Snapshots will perhaps be produced by plugging directly into a high-quality personal printer, so proud grandparents will always be able to tote around images of their grandkids. In 15 years, Smolan believes, Kodak will earn its money making prints rather than selling film, "and places like Kinko's will be able to receive digital 'flash pix' format images directly from consumers."
In this age of digital reproduction, ownership of information is easy to claim but difficult to enforce: downloading a photograph and adding it to your own Web site is a point-and-click affair. "Photographers are understandably concerned that their work will be pirated in this emerging medium," McCabe says. Smolan predicts that digital watermarks – transparent information encoded in an image – will indicate not only ownership but the specific time a picture is sold. That way, photographers will be able both to prove that an image is theirs and to track it back to the point where it was stolen or resold. On the other hand, Nagel comments, "long before the digital watermark catches on, cypher-appropriationists will come out with a method to defeat it."
Will photos of the future be truly three-dimensional, or will consumer holograms remain the stuff of security stamps and tacky jewelry? According to Nagel, holographic cameras for consumers will be technologically feasible by 2030, but it will be years before home viewers become affordable. "Until then, United Artists and Mann theaters will provide SHoVEs (shared holo-viewing environments) attached to movie theaters," he says, only half-jokingly. Gustin forecasts that rather than employing traditional laser-holographic technology, a future holocamera is more likely to take a 360-degree image – similar to the way QuickTime VR works – and knit it together automatically. The display? A card using lenticular imaging, seen today in those cheesy 3-D postcards – "But," he insists, "much, much better."
Has O. J. been hitting the tanning bed, or is that Time photo editor rasterbating again? Our sources are split as to whether a symbol like A should become standard to alert viewers that elements of an image have been digitally moved, added, or erased. Who can forget, for example, the uproar among professional photographers when National Geographic shifted the position of the Egyptian pyramids in a cover photo several years ago. "As an industry, we need to be able to guarantee an image's integrity," McCabe says. If not, Gustin adds, "photography will no longer be a dependable his-torical record." On the other hand, counters Nagel, "photographs have always lied, and this is not the time to start announcing it."
senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Eastman Kodak Company
senior vice president of marketing and business development, Digital Imaging Systems division, Applied Graphics Technologies Inc.
photographer, illustrator, designer; former art director, Mondo 2000
photographer and creator of the Day in the Life series; founder and president, Against All Odds Productions, creator of 24 Hours in Cyberspace and Passage to Vietnam
