As far as I can tell, the only clear thing separating so-called digital photography experts and the rest of us photographers is the word “expert.” I’ve met helpful photographers with a mind-blowing amount of experience and knowledge who refuse to call themselves experts. On the other hand, I’ve bumped into a few self-proclaimed experts who could use a lesson or two on some basic aspects of the craft.

While I’m the host of ACMetaforum, I definitely do not consider myself a digital photography expert. At the same time, I have been lucky enough to learn quite a bit of information about a few areas of electronic imaging from some photographers who definitely deserve to be called experts. And all of these experts have digital knowledge blind spots.

This brings us to the interesting reality that digital photography—with its myriad, constantly evolving tools—has totally changed the landscape of photographic knowledge. No longer are only a small percentage of photographers worthy of being called experts, and no longer can experts claim knowledge of incredibly broad areas of photography.

When Ansel Adams wrote The Negative and The Print more than 50 years ago, he wrote masterpieces of technique covering virtually all aspects of what would now be called “postproduction” for black and white photography. If you work in a darkroom almost every bit of the information in those two guides is still utterly relevant today.

In contrast, when Mikkel Aaland wrote Photoshop CS2 RAW, he wrote an extremely helpful technical guide that essentially became outdated as soon as Photoshop CS3 was released. (Aaland has kept up his level of expertise and recently cranked out Photoshop CS3 RAW.)

Of course, Aaland was only dealing with on aspect of Photoshop. (After all, he is primarily a photographer.) But even the people who live and breath Photoshop cannot claim expertise to all of its functionality. Okay, yes, John Nack and a few others get pretty darn close. But as critical as it is, Photoshop is only one piece of software that makes up the web of photographic technology.

Some rightfully-dubbed digital photography experts cover much broader ground. Photographer Richard Anderson authored the invaluable Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines (UPDIG), which the Library of Congress has recognized as one of the most important compilations of digital imaging information.

The funny thing is that even though Anderson is The Man when it comes to digital standards, two weeks ago–yes, believe it or not–I taught him something about metadata and file naming when we were chatting on the phone. How could a non-expert like me teach something to a true expert like Anderson? Because I had picked it up the information from photographer David Riecks when I was interviewing him for an article called “Basic Metadata: Don’t Process Without It,” which I wrote for the October/November 2007 issue of AfterCapture.

I interviewed photographer Peter Krogh for the same article. He’s another true expert, having carved out a unique place for himself as the digital asset management guru with his brilliant The DAM Book. (Good title.) Still, even though fine arts photographer Victoria Bjorklund only started photographing a few years ago, she has worked hard and excelled, and she is definitely an expert in her area of specialty. She proved it to me when I interviewed her for “Going Black & White—The Easy Way,” which was featured in the December/January 2008 issue of AfterCapture.

All of this leads me to state a realization that I think is appropriate to note in my inaugural posting of ACMetaforum: In today’s digital photography landscape, more photographers have more expertise in more specialized areas than ever before in the history of photography.

This photographic specialization is most clearly seen in everything that takes place after capture, where every day photographers are discovering new possibilities for how to approach the photographic process—from processing RAW files and adding metadata to amazing techniques for image adjustments and manipulation to new ways of sharing and distributing images via the Internet.

Maybe I was wrong to say that I am not an expert. In my own little, itty-bitty niche I do have useful knowledge and expertise to share. And, of course, you have your own level of expertise, too. And I have no doubt that you can help as many photographers as you can learn from.

It is with this spirit of photographers teaching, sharing, learning, supporting and inspiring each other that Rangefinder and AfterCapture magazine decided to launch ACMetaforum—as a place we can all come together to learn. Sometimes we will be the students, sometimes the experts. But we will always be photographers. And more than ever before, our crafts can benefit from our willingness to exchange ideas.

Tags: Ansel Adams, David Riecks, John Nack, Mikkel Aaland, Peter Krogh, Richard Anderson, The Negative, The Print, Victoria Bjorklund