The computer age is redefining photography, and yet notions of photography can still be colored by the 19th-century view that photography is a slice of time and hence, of reality. One inventor of photography called it "nature's pencil," and courts have seemed to agree by traditionally allowing photography as evidence in trials. The core of the news photographer's paradigm is that photography has a moral authority that eludes words. But the pixel (computer data transformations of a photograph) is replacing film with silicon chips, and darkrooms with computers. New technology will test the notions of photography as a slice of reality, a legal document, and as traditional photojournalism. There is a larger societal impact of this new technology, and the traditional ethical discussions regarding words and reporting do not fully encompass digitized computer photographs. Photojournalists, and perhaps society, are facing a "paradigm shift." (Thirty-eight notes are attached.) (RS)