How far, digitally speaking, does Meier intend to go? "I won't use filmless cameras -- they split photography the way video splits from motion picture film. It's just not the same quality or production. I don't see the digital camera as a main future direction in photography."

Although Meier doesn't believe so, other photographers and editors predict that by the year 2005, the vast majority of fashion magazines and their photographers will become completely digital and film photography will become a mere shadow of the past. Most likely the trend will be to forgo the traditional fashion shoot and digitally create the woman, dress her in `90s retro and place her in the clouds, all in one Photoshop session.

However, do not fret for the eventual loss of all human contact and fashion photography as we know it today. As Dennis Golonka, Associate Art Editor at Harper's Bazaar, predicts, the immersion into the world of digital technology will eventually open the flood gates for a "return to film fad. . . Like when color film took off and became the main medium for photography and then, suddenly, black and white` was rediscovered as more chic and artistic, film will resurface from the depths of computer created images as the hot new trend in photography." No wonder fashion and photography make such a great couple.

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