20 Years of Photography Innovations

I stumbled upon this list while reading a post over at Sephi Bergson’s site about 10 Photographers who have Influenced his career.

In it, Sephi referenced the PDN 20th Anniversary | 20 Most Influential photographer list. If you click on the ‘Innovations’ tab on the PDN 20th Anniversary link, you get a 20-year time line from 1980 through to 2000, with a list of photo relevant events for each year.

Wow! Talk about a blast from the past.

Reading through the time line, I couldn’t help but think how the 1980′s and 1990′s weren’t that long ago.

Below I have reproduced a few of my favourite historical items from the PDN list. These are word-for-word and are in bold. My additional comments are in italics.

1982

National Geographic uses digital imaging technology to move the pyramids in a horizontal image so the composition works better as a vertical cover shot. The incident underscores how easily and imperceptibly new technology can be used to alter editorial images, and touches off an ethical debate about image manipulation and the public trust that is still smoldering.

Ethics and image manipulation continue to burn through public trust. Check out some recent stories:

Photographer Edgar Martins uses digital manipulation on images for NY Times, which are subsequently pulled by the NY Times. Full story here.

Art students fake photos and take top prize in the Paris Match photography contest. Full story here.

Did Time magazine digitally alter a cover? Full story here.

I am sure there are plenty more examples floating around cyberspace.

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1985

Three stock agencies – The Image Bank, PhotoUnique and Uniphoto – begin storing and distributing images on videodiscs. Each hubcab-sized disc holds up to 100,000 pictures and can be viewed only on a special player hooked up to a computer. Though later supplanted by CDs, the laserdisc experiment marks a major step toward electronic storage and delivery of stock images.

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1987

The Associated Press announces plans to convert from analog to digital image transmission, cutting transmission times by 90 percent. The conversion took about five years to complete, but it helped to push newspaper photography into the digital age.

Isn’t it easy in this day an age of instant publishing and ftp uploads to forget that the photography world didn’t use to be like this?

Below are two articles I remember about near instant photo transmission and speed to market.

At the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics, Vincent Laforet uses personal file sharing and remote transmission to push his photos to his photo editor, while he is still shooting the actual event. Read the full story: Vincent Laforet In Tight in Torino (warning: Apple site with serious plugs for Aperture!)

For the 2009 Michael Jackson Memorial event, Andrew Gombert uses Photoshelter technology to allow 23,000 images to be downloaded by photo buyers around the world in the 24-hours after the memorial. Read the full story: Michael Jackson Memorial Images & Distribution Workflow

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1990

AP introduces PhotoStream, the digital image-delivery system it first announced in 1987. The system’s platform is the proprietary Leaf Picture Desk (LPD), developed in tandem with Leaf Systems and offered free of charge to AP member newspapers. Ultimately, newspapers would mothball the LPDs in favor of Mac-based picture-handling system and Internet servers. But PhotoStream and Leaf Picture Desk pushed newspaper photography into the digital age.

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At CERN: Tim Berners-Lee (with R. Cailliau) invents the World Wide Web on his NeXT machine, rooting the idea in Ted Nelson’s pioneering hypertext concept. Not content with the profundity of his invention, Berners-Lee also develops a “Web browser” on his NeXT machine. With Berners-Lee’s browser, users can not only view Web pages, you can also design and edit them. Fortunately for high-priced designers everywhere, the “designing” part of the browser does not make it out of Berners-Lee’s lab.

If it wasn’t for these guys, you wouldn’t even be reading these words right now.

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1995

The stock industry’s mom-and-pop days are numbered. Oil fortune heir Mark Getty and investment banker Jonathan Klein form Getty Investment Holdings and buy into the stock photo business with the acquisition of Tony Stone Worldwide. They quickly go public and seek to dominate the stock business through acquisition and automation.

Who doesn’t know the story of Getty Images?

Getty Images was sold in 2008 for a cool $2.4 billion. It took just 13-years for an oil tycoon heir and a business man to totally dominate the stock photography market.

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1998

After a few dark years on the endangered species list, Apple revitalizes itself with iBook and the iMac – a line of easy-to-use and powerful machines with a funky new design.

Isn’t this THE story of Apple?

Can anyone say iPhone?

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Well, that takes care of 1980 to 2000. For the years 2001 to 2009, I would add:

TinEye – A reverse image search engine created by Idee Inc

Of course there are plenty of other photography innovations out there. What would you list for the period 2001 to 2009?

Please add your contribution in the comments section.

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