Our departmental photographer has just retired. His assistant left a few months earlier and now we have no photographer.
In the good old days (well some years ago), materials science departments were full of dark-rooms. Students were always developing films, microscope plates and making prints of images. A ritual in the first term of a PhD was being taught how to use developer and fixer. Photograpers had to maintain all the chemicals, dishes and optical equipment. They also took photographs of staff, students, equipment, objects and had studios and lights. Photography was a skilled job and the photography technician was an integral part of the life of the department.
Now we live in the age of the CCD. Students take pictures of things with their phones. I doubt if any of them know what fixer is. Gradually the dark-rooms reduced in number as more and more equipment became “digital”. The photographers were given other tasks of maintenance or administration and their jobs became less attractive. Now we no longer have photographers, instead most people do what is needed themselves.
Unfortunately, with the ease of image acquisition and image reproduction, there has been a reduction in critical analysis of output. It is now so easy to make an image in a thesis or publication that we now regularly see pictorial diarrhoea in student theses. If the images had to be lovingly extracted from negatives and developed in a bath to enhance contrast then more thought may be put into the selection process. I still fondly remeber the dats when the picture didn’t lie and image processing meant waving your hansds over too bright regions projected onto photographic paper.
Isn’t the fixer the guy who gets you the mobile phone?
I remember that period. Not at all fondly. Thank goodness for digital photos.
Hear, hear Heather. I don’t have the lab experience, but out in the real world, it’s so much easier. Think how difficult it used to be, sticking a paper photograph onto a blog entry. They kept falling off the electrons.