Photography as an Asteroid

Have you seen a shooting star? According to Fraser Cain, a shooting star is another name for a meteoroid that burns up as it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere. Most of the shooting stars are known as meteoroids. If they’re larger than a rock, astronomers call them asteroids.

       

How about an asteroid falling from the sky? Well, a shooting star is also an asteroid, but the only difference is the shooting star or meteoroid already burn up as it enters the Earth and it is smaller. With an asteroid, this must be really big that may create an impact to the crust of the Earth just like in the movie Deep Impact.

       

Relating to photography, it is like an asteroid which created an impact to the society. Based from the article I’ve read entitled The Impact of Photography on Society, Dirk Huds mentioned six areas of the society where it had greatly affected.

       

First is about memory. According to Roland Barthes, a theorist of photography, a photograph is the “sovereign contingency” which means being dependent on something else happening. Photographers were used to preserve an event which in the past, it was only stored in our memory. Photography also records significant events in the history. It helps in saving real events happened in the past, for example, the assassination of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino and EDSA People Power which freed us from dictatorship. Next is employment which gave jobs through the introduction of new cameras and professionals in the fields of film, news casting, editing, and photojournalism. Photography also became accessible because nowadays, anyone could be a photographer with the new gadgets and equipments used in taking photographs. With this, photography seemed to be the most widely used art form. Speaking of art, photography was the reason why artists now had to find new modes of operation and seismic shifts in art production. It has already developed and improved much faster than arts. And last, but not the least is science and other related fields. Photography helps in researches and taking photographs of the things which contribute to the advancement and innovations.

       

                With all these effects on our society, photography is not a small field anymore. As Dirk Huds said, “Photography has changed the way we view the world.” It affects the life of every person it will influence. In every aspect, it has a contribution and often, it creates development and changes that help to further add more information essential in our progress. And as an asteroid, once it landed on Earth, photography will continue to keep burning as it becomes a part of our modern society.