As a die-hard traditionalist it may seem strange that I am advocating taking "Photography" from the English language and replacing it with the word "Imaging".

 Sadly many of our friends using digital imaging to produce their images have usurped the world of the photographic prints and insist that their final images are photographic prints. This cannot be! By sheer definition a photographic print is produced by exposing a sensitised surface to light and subsequently treating it with chemicals. In the production of a digital image neither light nor chemicals are involved so it is a digital print not a photographic print.

"But", they cry, "we use a camera to capture the image so our prints are photographs".

To that my reply is that as a pastime I dabble with water colours. As my drawing is not very good I take a photograph of my subject, project it on to water-colour paper on my enlarger baseboard and draw round the various details in the image. I exclude, or rub out, any detail I feel intrudes then add paint happily. I have used a camera to capture my subject but no way would I dare suggest that my finished painting is a photograph.

In fact I do just the same as a digital worker who captures his subject in camera, scans the image into his computer, plays around with the detail on the screen and, finally, adds the pigment to the plain paper by pressing the print button. He has done mechanically just what I do manually.

I am frequently told that the digital worker is merely using the computer as a dry dark room because it is more convenient. This I cannot accept. Try turning it into reverse. Can a "wet" darkroom worker replicate the processes offered to the digital worker through the skills of software writers. Of course he can’t!

A simple example: A friend of my late son is into World War Two aircraft and is highly skilled in computer usage. He recently took a photograph of his wife standing by a World War Two plane at Duxford Air Museum. Once the image was in his computer he changed her clothes, and hairstyle, from 21 st century to Second World War uniform and hairstyle. This using "tools" offered by the software in his computer.

I doubt if anyone could do that using the original image and the enlarger.

I accept it could be done using an additional photograph and making a collage but this is in camera, not in the darkroom.

To me many of the digital images produced are merely copies of the traditional processes without using the skills that traditional workers spent time learning and developing. 

For example to produce the Sabattier effect, one switches on a white light during processing of the print. The timing and duration of the additional exposure is critical to ensure you get the outlines (Mackie lines) around the tonal separations which give the photograph its distinctive appearance.

Using Photoshop the digital worker does it in one step process: Filter, Stylise, Solarize; thanks to the efforts of the software writer.

So should we throw out "photography" in favour of "imaging", which is a more honest term for our hobby?

There again artists may well want to call their paintings "Digital Images"!!

Geoff Holmes, 2005