It is not what you call yourself, it is what others call you that seems to be the issue.
It is not what you call yourself, it is what others call you that seems to be the issue.I've never had any interest in what people call themselves. Self-identification is a personal sovereignty right which I respect fully.
Not for me. People can and have called me a million different names. One or two of them were even nice.It is not what you call yourself, it is what others call you that seems to be the issue.
So, where should one draw the line for an argument like this being 'beyond absurd' based on what tools and skills are used to reach an end result?
I think that is a Chicken Little mentality. Hand made objects only become more valuable with an increase in mechanization. The problem is the ability to afford them.Well, of course everyone can draw whatever lines they like. My concern for the future is to still have some human creativity and skill expressed in a society run by AI tyrants.
My concern for the future is to still have some human creativity and skill expressed in a society run by AI tyrants.
Let's do a thought experiment. What if we limited the term photographer to one who makes images with film and chemistry. Let's call those who work with a digital camera digital imagers or something else. What changes other than an exceedingly small group of people feel vindicated? How do we educate the general public in the use of the term, so that they know when they book a wedding photographer instead of a wedding digital imager they are going to wind up with images from film and chemistry? In reality, I think the train has left the station, and that film photographers, who are the only ones that have a dog in the hunt, missed their opportunity 20-30 years ago. Something about putting the genie back in the bottle comes to mind. Not saying that it is impossible, but at some point you just start to sound pedantic.
Perhaps some digital imagers would feel diminished if they were excluded from the definition of photographer. Probably depends on who is doing the excluding, and what their new moniker would be. I may not be very sophisticated, but whether I am using a film or digital camera, or making traditional, hybrid, or digital prints, it sure feels like I am doing photography. At lot has changed in the 45 years I've been doing this, but the essential elements remain the same, at least for me....and apparently some digital image makers feel...what left out? diminished somehow? Your argument goes both ways,
Meanwhile Google Maps is still making mistakes calculating routes. Don't believe everything you read, specially in general/popular press.
Art is above any other consideration a form of expression. Painting, sculpture, dancing, music, writting, photography, cinema... they are just vehicles. All of them will exist somehow as long as human beings along with new ones we can't imagine now.
and Google and the other tyrants have just started destroying the art in photography and film making
yup. nowhere does it say chemistry or darkroom or what have you.Photo=light. Graphy = to write. Pick your writing tool. What matters are the words and the work you produce.
Perhaps some digital imagers would feel diminished if they were excluded from the definition of photographer. Probably depends on who is doing the excluding, and what their new moniker would be. I may not be very sophisticated, but whether I am using a film or digital camera, or making traditional, hybrid, or digital prints, it sure feels like I am doing photography. At lot has changed in the 45 years I've been doing this, but the essential elements remain the same, at least for me.
Photo=light. Graphy = to write. Pick your writing tool. What matters are the words and the work you produce.
yup. nowhere does it say chemistry or darkroom or what have you.
I am often wondering why people spend so much time online on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other media. It could be (between other things) that world is presented as nicer, more ideal, and more cool on the edited photos than in reality. Best example are self-portraits where majority of people present them self in much nicer, prettier, skinner, cooler way - in a false way. Your example is also following my toughts.
I got sick of Facebook a long time ago, primarily because of the endless bragging and 'one-upmanship': Look at my huge TV. Look at me on the beach in the Caribbean while you're all stuck at home. Look at my beautiful children. Look at my gorgeous dress. Look at my expensive lens. Look at this sunset that my new expensive camera took [which I processed to death to look much better than reality because I have to justify the cost, convince people I'm an amazing photographer even though I take the same tedious shots as everyone else, and compete with all the other OTT fakes on social media].
@FujiLove
AI is already in consumer software from Adobe and Google, and AI chips are now being put in lower end consumer cameras. So, it's already here and the pictures spewing out of that AI mind will have less and less and less authenticity until they have no human creativity in them at all. And we haven't even talked yet about "drone photography."
Anecdote:
8 years ago I was in a photo critique with 40 others. A person pinned a photo on the board of a charming back porch scene with a few twinkling lights. After a sentence or two the person said, "Oh, that moon wasn't there. I added that in Photoshop." The room gasped. The Rubicon had been crossed and everyone knew it. It was the huge moon behind the roofline that made the picture. Sure, everyone used P'shop for tuning a picture, but no one would have dreamed of adding a whole element from another picture. That was beyond the pale. It's not that plenty of faking hadn't been done in darkrooms, but everyone understood that the Photoshop just made such nonsense almost irresistible. Should we praise the next gorgeous picture, or is this one fake too? What sort of talent is represented in this one? Was the person really this good at composition or was this stuff added later? It mattered, even though no one expressly said "this just ain't right." Everyone had a level of discomfort about Photoshop. Everyone became kind of defensive - "I only adjusted the contrast" was heard everywhere. There were endless side discussions over the next year or so about how people should describe a photo they present. Everyone agreed that for sure any added elements should be disclosed, etc.
The important thing to note about this is that Photoshop easily won the economic battle as "the easiest and cheapest way to process images." Darkroom equipment was sold off at garage sale prices by the heaps. Everyone already had a PC, so adding editing software and a relatively dirt cheap Epson was a no-brainer. No more waiting for expensive lab prints to arrive in the mail. No more trips to Costco print center. The called it the "Digital Dark Room" which was a complete misnomer, but it made everyone comfortable that all they had done is "update their technology" - nothing had really changed. And at all the superficial levels, that's true - it was just a new way to develop pictures. But of course, that's a superficial analysis. What changed is that human creativity was being replaced incrementally with artificial creativity - bit by bit - ever so slowly - until the last bit of human creativity is wrung out of the process. A fully crap photo can easily be turned into a master-piece with the click of a mouse.
"All that matters is the final picture." Well, no. I'll say that the picture is what matters LEAST. What had mattered socially was the human creativity, because those creatives had a major influence on society specifically because of their creativity. "AI" is a social poison that crowds out the rare creative persons, and floods the arena with buffoons who can click a mouse. In economic terms, AI lowers the cost of production by orders of magnitude. What took 10 hours in a dark room, takes 10-seconds with AI. Cheap chases out expensive. That's just fundamental to market societies. When the iPhone was launched with camera, "serious" photogs laughed up their sleeves - "who would take pictures with such a crappy camera?" Who? Billions of people globally, that's who. Now the phone camera is a staple of photography. Go to any larger event and compare the number of people snapping away on phones to those with Nikon/Canon traditional cameras.
I use Photoshop/Lightroom too. I have had Epson printers. I own expensive digital cameras. I have shot pics with cell phones. I am a part of the flow, too. I am not making any moral judgments about individuals (in spite of the number of posts which assume I am). I am caught up in the same economic tsunami as everyone else. I am merely saying to artists who care - "watch out...things are getting worse...let's not lose the world of creativity to AI (alien intelligence)."
Doesn’t Facebook just send you things your “Facebook friends” have posted?
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