

When I studied photography in the (very) early nineties I imagined a life of shoots on the beach involving pretty girls (naturally) and hours spent in the darkroom in the labour of love of the silver emulsion fine print. Remember, Photoshop was then in its infancy and Macs ran on diesel and a photoshop command took lunch time to complete. There we were, amazed by this tech ,but dutifully returning to the colour darkroom to fumble in the pitch dark, not actually realising we were witnessing the first stages of the revolution of Photography. So those shoots of pretty girls on the beach may still be on the cards, but the labour of love is now in front of a high end calibrated monitor, and those beautiful idiosyncrasies of light , film and developer are replaced by the idiosyncrasies of software conflicts and digital colour management.
As a pro photographer of the pre digital era, one's skillset included a knowledge of film emulsions and b/w developing recipes, but now we can can proudly add computer geek to our must have skills and minus the film stuff, unless you're a purist in which case respect...
Dont get me wrong, I'm loving the digital era that we live in, but it has brought its own set of pro's and cons which i will not delve into. Its seems just the other day when pro photogs were asking each other if they were seriously thinking of "going digital" and clients insisted on still getting a trannie because it had "something special". I laughed out loud when a client who wanted to print their image on a milk carton tetrapak (about 6 dpi res) insisted on film for that extra "something". Yes , film has a romance and a craft level to it that I still respect, but digital is the here and now and we as pro's now need to have a serious knowledge of all things related to computer and software. And thats the challenge..
If you spent 24\7 learning about all the latest developments in computers, programs, plugins, cameras, lenses, storage solutions, fine printing, colour management and all he peripheral crap attached to that, where do you find time to shoot? Shooting takes priority, so all the research has to happen when the marketing,meetings pre and post production and shooting is done. And if you're really busy, research suffers and you fall behind.
I allowed myself to fall behind for a while because I got wrapped up in shooting crap every day, and playing catchup now is a full time effort.
I mean just this month saw the release of Photoshop CS4( quite different if you were used to CS), Capture1 version4 and just before that, Lightroom 2. At least its on the job learning, but that can be dangerous in capture software. So right now, making up for lost time and getting up to speed, the learning curve is steep. I have learned that there is no place for comfort zones in tech, and sticking with a version of Photoshop or something like that just because you know it is asking to get left behind. So back to the computer we go. I do dig it though..