Photography is an art, isn’t it? Yes, as software architecture is. To be more precise, both the software architect and the photographer, even though in different proportions, use a mixture of science and art. You will hardly do good things with very bad tools, such as lenses made of cheap plastic or a poor programming language, but the key factor to success is still you, with your experience, knowledge and creativity. As a famous photographer says, “There’s no such a thing as a lens that takes pictures by itself.”

Undoubtedly, digital cameras and sophisticated embedded image processors today make it easier to have a keeper shot, and the cost of each photo has lowered since the old times when you had to develop film in the wet darkroom. So better tools have indeed decreased costs and shortened the time of delivery. But the average quality hasn’t increased. On the contrary, places such as Flickr are mostly filled with photos with no value, the typical “point-and-shoot” stuff made by “holiday photographers”, while professionals, even though they are very happy with their new tools, always pay more attention to “the process” (yes, they use this word too).