The invention of the digital camera has meant that photography has become an accessible art form for so many people. By the first decade of the 21st century film-based photography had become a niche activity.

One critical reaction to the new world of digital photography comes from Richard White, an Australian large format photographer based in Victoria He says that this new style of photography seems to be everywhere and it seems to be done to death. We are over saturated with imagery to the point that people don’t notice the good pictures any more.

White adds:

I am over the over saturated, over manipulated, over worked, over done vacuous pictures that pass for photography these days. The composite images that fool us without clarification, the jacket that was photographed blue, but changed to red because some geek has squeezed it into some software package that has been designed to deceive us with its clever tricks. I am over all the false colours that appear in images most of the time, because mainly people have been heavy handed with the slider and maybe they are trying to cover up their inadequate image.

Photography for White is analogue photography which is different from digital photography. His argument against the latter is that falsifying or changing colours past the point of no return is misrepresenting nature. He wants real pictures,bwhich for him seem to be large format classic black and white, even though he acknowledges that black and white is also an abstraction from nature.