PHOTOGRAPHERS in CYBERSPACE
(written 2/95)
Chicago photographer Richard Faverty sends out-of-town clients photographs for approval via the Internet, instead of showing them Polaroids.
Midwest photographer/physicist Harry Prezekop, who specializes in high-speed and special-effect subjects, receives image transmissions from spacecraft traveling millions of miles from Earth.
Spokane newspaper photographer Dan Macomb told his side of the story on a computer network's Professional Photographers Forum the day after allegedly being assaulted by 0.J. Simpson investigation detective Mark Fuhrman during his visit to that city.
Computer communications exist in "cyberspace," which William Gibson describes in his novel, Necromancer, as "a consensual hallucination...a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system." Computer communications can involve a satellite link or a cable connecting two computers, over which data is transmitted. A telephone modem can connect your computer with anyone in the world with a similar rig. The latest modems have speeds of 28,000 bps (bauds-per- second) and cost as little as $200, and the computer software to operate them costs as little as $100. As with most computer peripherals, capability rises as prices drop, and last-year's 14,400 bps modems that formerly sold for $150, are now $50.
Computer communications can become part of everyday life, and you can obtain individual answers to your technical questions overnight or receive news flashes by the hour using one of the many computer networks. It's as if each day you had a newspaper personally written and waiting for you.
The ASMP Chicago/Midwest Chapter's Photo Stop BBS offers a local network among your colleagues. Now three years old, Photo Stop BBS is a way to reach more than 250 ASMP members and photo industry contacts, send and receive E-Mail messages, and post information on an electronic bulletin board. Using Photo Stop BBS isn't complicated, and is a free service provided by the chapter to the local photographic community.
Other more sophisticated online services, such as CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online, have a basic cost of approximately $10 per month. The ASMP offers a "Members Only" section nationwide on the CompuServe Photo Professionals Forum, where ASMP members can check in to discuss and learn about timely issues. The "network of networks" is the Internet, which connects you with an apparently infinite web of computer users, and has an access fee of approximately $20 per month.
The Internet holds the future of computer communications not only because it reaches 25 million computers around the world at last count, or that the number of users is projected to increase to 200 million by the year 2000 but also because of its ability to transfer large files at high speed to any of those computer locations.
The capability of transferring image files is especially important to photographers; newspapers have been doing this sort of thing for years. For example, the ASMP owned Media Photographers Copyright Agency plans an online service for photo buyers, which permit online viewing of member photographs, as well as the ability to download high-res digital images for sale. The MPCA service will have a database search ability by subject, location, photographer, etc.
Today, Internet is the best service for photographic image transmission because of its ability to handle high speed modems and its sophisticated File Transfer Protocols (FTP). Internet usage has become easier because of software programs, such as Mosaic (developed by the University of Illinois), that help browsers to navigate the Net.
Photographer Richard Faverty sends JPEG-compressed image files via the Internet to out-of-town clients, and while both view the image on their respective color monitors, they can the make changes in the image before the full size digital file is finalized and delivered.
Physicist Harry Prezekop has been on Internet for 20 years (since his graduate student days). He transfers gigabyte size files using high speed modems, and has received microwave signals from satellites and the Voyager spacecraft. As a photographer, he has pioneered computer imaging and created a special niche for his work.
My own use of computers and computer communications has been an evolution that started eight years ago when I bought my first. I'm now working on my third computer. During the first four years, my primary applications were business management and word processing. During the second four years, I ventured into computer communication, including Photo Stop BBS. The next phase in this evolution will be digital manipulation and electronic distribution of images . Perhaps I should wait, though, because these applications will require an upgrade in computer equipment that will cost two and a half times what I paid for my first car.
Prodigy photography columnist Harry Horenstein wrote: "Photographers will need to use computers in the future, like they used darkrooms in the past." Once I would have said it's "good" for photographers to know how to operate computers. The time is now approaching, where it's necessary for photographers to be computer literate in order to continue in their professions.
©1995 Wm. Franklin McMahon
Wm. Franklin McMahon is Systems Operator for the ASMP Chicago/ Midwest's Chapter's Photo Stop BBS.
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Photography on the Web © 1997 Wm. Franklin McMahon |