As a child, I thought it was the coolest thing ever to play with a Polaroid camera and watch a photo develop right in front of me. Then there was the family camera, an old Olympus point and shoot contraption. My parents would snap dozens of photos of my sister, the dog and me. It was always quite a feat to get all of us–generally in a restless blur of motion–in one clear photo. We wouldn’t know how the photo turned out until after we retrieved it from the neighborhood Kodak lab. Since my dad invested in a digital camera, however, we get results in a jiff! Not only that, my dad could edit a pet unicorn into family photos or change the background to exotic locales, much to my sister’s and my delight. The technology for digital photography has come a long way since then, transforming what was once simply a convenience factor into a high art.

Take a couple seconds to admire the luscious images below:

Eric Larson-”On McAllister St.”

Candy colored houses! Yuuuum…I’d probably eat them if “Hansel and Gretel” had not been part of my childhood repertoire. Alas–it was, so I shall content myself by feasting my eyes on Eric Larson’s vision of SF’s painted ladies.

Eric Larson-”Cliff House”

The vivid contrast created by the building with a soft halo of light emanating from within against the inky sky, the flush of the water’s white caps and the tense suspension of the rocky formations give this image a hyper-real quality.

Eric Larson-Seal Rock from the Ruins

Fun fact: Just one gorgeous cliff shot here? Nope. It’s actually three exposures.

All right. Now that you’ve had the chance to admire these three photos, here are some thoughts from artist Eric Larson about the digital media phenomenon.

He reminisces about his first exposure to digital media: “I worked for Sony Corporation for about nine years and was actually in digital media back at the infancy of digital photography with what they called electronic photography. At the time the Kodak camera had one megapixel and was $50,000. By today’s standards it was a joke…” Yikes! It’s hard to believe that you can now buy a decent digital camera for under a hundred bucks.

In regards to being at the forefront of the technology’s development, he says: “[In 1992] the technology wasn’t good enough for print media. The printer was beyond-belief expensive. When the technology became available and affordable for anyone I saw it as transforming like the printing press. What it has done for humanity has been very exciting.”

Now he has the means and the imagination to bring his ideas to life. “The thing I like about digital is now there is software. Traditional [photography] evolved…this is just the next stage. With digital there’s a lot more tools for artists to visualize. [My own art] evolved in ways that were quite unexpected. I saw a way to make a personal statement and expression that hadn’t been explored. I feel the audience can look at things in ways they hadn’t seen before.”

Images courtesy of Eric Larson at www.flickr.com/photos/eklarson