Digital photography

For five participants, digital photography was the first time they had been introduced to ‘creative’ photography (photography other than family photos and holiday snaps). Two of the female participants revealed that losing their husbands through death or divorce was one of the contributing factors for adopting photography. Digital photography had been enthusiastically embraced for its ease of use, immediacy and advocated for its relatively low cost compared to its analogue/film counterpart. Therefore, it was the gateway technology that gave this age range greater freedom to create digital content. Julie was typical of these participants as she found the instantaneous process of using digital photography and creating digital content encouraged her to upload and share online with others, a subject covered in greater depth in the following chapter.

Julie +65: When I discovered digital photography [it] changed my life because you could directly see what you did and put in your computer, and then I wanted to put it in my blogs and I discovered I could put it on Flickr, too.

While these advantages were similar for each age range, the over-65 participants were the most vocal in discussing the merits of digital photography. This was consistent with their recent introduction to digital content creation tools and practices. As the preceding chapter discussed, several of the participants developed an interest in digital photography through the adoption of hobbies in retirement and in some cases this was a rediscovery of a youthful aspiration. All participants found that once they had embraced the digital domain, going back to analogue was inconceivable. Susanne illustrates this directly by explaining that her interest in photography purely extends to the digital format, which in turn introduced her to computers and the internet.

Asked why this was the case, she suggests a freer, extemporaneous and less restrictive way of use.

Susanne +65: I’m not a control freak like the traditional old-fashioned photographers who decide whether the picture is going to look a particular way. I enjoy the camera surprising me and being spontaneous. I see the result and say, “right, that’s interesting, I hadn’t planned that. I’ll change what I’m going to do because here is an effect I like that I didn’t intend or expect”. So I wouldn’t be doing photography if it weren’t for the capacity of a digital camera to show you the picture and allow you to take as many shots as you want.

For Susanne, adoption of digital photography afforded her with spontaneous and serendipitous qualities along with the facility for experimentation easily and freely. This led directly to her involvement in a creative process and self-expression. She also disassociated herself with the controlled photographic (film) practices of the past. Susanne expressed that digital photography was the enabler for her self- created content. This supports the notion that digital photography is a gateway technology in the creation of content for this age range. Initially this view might appear technologically deterministic, since the new technology forms new practices and behaviours. However, as previously stated, several participants in this age range (including Susanne) were denied the opportunity to take-up creative pursuits in earlier life. Therefore, digital technology (as well as more available time in retirement) has facilitated the motivations and creative aspirations that they were denied. Put simply, digital tools allow for new or supressed behaviours but they don't cause them (see Shirky interviewed in Aitkenhead, 2010).

The majority of the sample had used Adobe Photoshop, or other photo manipulation and editing software, which enabled them to edit their photographs through a single a computer interface (see Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001), and provided additional resources such as image resizing and retouching (see Bezemer and Kress, 2008). Editing digital photographs takes two different forms. Firstly, due to the digital format’s affordance to cheaply store a greater quantity of photographs, the process of choosing and editing down the most appealing and appropriate photograph is increased through creative decision-making. Secondly, in choosing the picture or

pictures from the full set of photographs, they can enhance and manipulate their photographs for aesthetic purposes.

Several participants found learning this kind of software influenced how they took photographs, adding a pre-planned creative thought-process to their practice. Photo- manipulation software also gave certain participants the freedom to go beyond the simple chromatic level changes available and adopt compositing techniques like layering. Indeed, Julie, who has 35,000 photos on Flickr, ‘plays’ with her photographs by editing them together, which encouraged her creative instincts.

Julie +65: I like to use Photoshop to play with my photos to make them better and to [composite] them together. […] Usually I go out and I take 150 photos and put half on Flickr.

Julie used Photoshop to remix her own content and construct new images and meaning from her images. Similarly, Bill cuts out sections of his photographs and combines them with other graphic techniques, such as creating speech bubble captions and adding text.

Bill +65: My recent [joke photo was of] a cat sitting outside a barn and then adding a caption underneath, “Never mind all this astronomy, what about another sausage”, which I think is quite amusing. […] The other thing I do is to take someone’s head and put onto something out of context then you can put a caption on it.

Bill typifies several participants in this age range who had initially learnt digital skills for a specific interest or hobby, as in Bill’s Astro photography, but through that medium found other ways of expressing themselves as a form of vernacular, everyday creativity (see Burgess, 2007; Gauntlett, 2011). The majority of participants had never created their own visual content prior to retirement and have moved from being solely content consumers to content creators as well (see Shirky, 2010).

Participants were asked whether adopting photography had made them view the world differently. Several indicated that becoming involved with digital photography had encouraged them to more closely observe the world around them and record and remember events.