What has changed in 20 years (or 30)?

Glove, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I have greatly enjoyed blogging about photography, especially the possibility to engage in discussions with inspiring bloggers. A nice discussion on this was initiated recently by Paul Lester: "it’s just like when you have repeated exposure to someone, you get to know a bit about their life, habits, likes, and dislikes, etc. Such is the nature of repeat visits here and my repeat visits to your site. I find it enjoyable."

Nowadays - thanks to the net - getting feedback is much easier that it used to be in many areas of art and skill. I just wonder what I (as a teenager) would have done with access to such a medium. Today teenagers are putting videos of their crazy stunts on the net for other to comment. Or just send them to friends with the camera phones.

I find this change fascinating. My company recently organized an event to celebrate 20 years of internet in Finland. At that time Nokia and the big Finnish telecompanies got their internet access throught the university network Funet. About ten years later (or ago) things speeded up, and suddenly we had the "interweb" where everything seemed to be possible.

Another kinds of developments are interesting also. I have a feeling that in early 1980s when I started to take photos, the common aim was to get everything sharp in the photo, maximising the DOF. At some point "bokeh" appeared, and photographers started to use out-of-focus blur to great effect, not only to remove unwanted details from the background but to provide additional power and commentary to the main subject.

Nowadays those who use compact cameras (like me) seem to have a handicap in this area, but I'm still not quite up to the current style, so a compact fits me better. But nevertheless I'm trying to learn about different kinds of blurring and how they provide a valuable aspect of the photography "vocabulary".

Things are changing, perhaps even progressing. Without these discussions - or at least commentary - with fellow bloggers I would be quite lost. But slowly I'm getting familiar with some of the secrets in photography, although I couldn't say that they suit me well, as an old glove (referring to the photo here).

Update: I forgot to thank the repeat visitors to this blog - the frequent commenters, and those who read but perhaps don't comment. Having a joint discussion, or at least some common ground, means a lot to me.

Update 2: A column I wrote on the freedom of knowledge appeared on Monday (in Finnish, Pitäisikö tietämyksen olla perusoikeus?). In the column I referred to the saying "information wants to be free", to the "Freedom of Information Act" principle, and the "freedom of knowledge" and open access principles currently being developed by the European commission. This topic is related to the rights of photographers to practise their craft, and to the rights of citizens to access knowledge - photography as an example - on the topics which interest them.