We all like to take photographs, and today a “point and click” culture has developed in photography, because of the relative ease and automation of the process to simply capture an image with a single click. However, if you are an artist or researcher who uses digital photography as the medium for your study, it is often necessary to quantify and subsequently qualify the integrity of your work, which can often be difficult, but is necessary for comparison of the relative quality of photographs that is needed to help ensure future funding and enhancing ones own profile as an artist. By applying emergy methods an alternative and novel way of assessing the impact and effort involved in digital photography can be determined.

This research aims to show how emergy can be applied to quantify the process of digital photography, looking at aspects related to the decisions made when taking a photograph, the technology used, the consideration given towards subject matter and image, and the further enhancement/digitisation of the photograph. The emergy methods will also be used to illustrate the effort put in by the photographer in producing a photographic composition by quantifying the process and giving a numerical figure to quantify effort. This is something new and has not been applied within the visual arts, so it can be seen as an exciting opportunity to demonstrate the effort that has gone in to a particular photograph or into the photography of an individual. Another result of the study will be that of being able to give another level of assessment of the potential impact of the photographic research, something that funding bodies in the UK are keen to de aware of.