Every photographer is a communicator -- a visual writer. There is a Chinese proverb that says a picture is worth more than a thousand words. What is the value of a thousand words? The 23rd Psalm has 117 words, the Gettysburg Address has 271 words, all the verses of the Star Spangled Banner have 316 words, the Declaration of Independence has 1308 words. Clearly, a lot can be said in a thousand words. When a writer using the written word wishes to include someone else's words, the honest writer acknowledges that with quotation marks and appropriate attribution. To do otherwise would be plagiarism. Often books show two or more writers as authors

Visual communication is not so strict. Camera users can use computer software programs to enhance their visual writing without being required to provide any attribution. In camera club competitions we aren't told that the image was by several writers, John/Jane Doe the camera person, the designer of Swirl Technique in Software Program ABC, Version 5.7, and the computer operator. Who, therefore, is the maker? John/Jane Doe the camera person, the designer of the software program, or the computer operator using the software program? Who really deserves the ribbon?

All this technical progress is amazing and the resulting images may be stunning -- a 747 in a Vodka bottle, as it were. But who is the real writer? That is why I still shoot slides. I know that I am the writer (occasionally good but more often bad). I don't want a Ghost Writer called software program XYZ, Version 7.3. No doubt the resulting image would be improved, but I would not be the writer

Joseph Miller