Photography's Unintended Obsolescence...?....

[yeknom02]

I don't think the general public ever had that good an idea of what makes a great photograph. How many photographers are well-known to the general public? Very, very few.

I just tested this with my fiancée. When I asked her to name famous photographers, she could name Ansel Adams and Andy Warhol.

 

[blansky]

Photography's future is assured when people realise that digital picture-making isn't photography at all. It's a clever electronic and data-based recreation of the traditional work-flow of paintings and drawings. Yes, what used to be done by looking, thinking, and hand work can now be done by image capture, processing, and output. The making of pictures out of light sensitive materials, what photography has always been, is a different process with a different relationship to subject matter and a different relationship to the aware viewer.

It doesn't become the truth that digital picture-making is photography even if millions of people say it for a hundred years. Consider a sharp analogy. Californian wine, dry, white, and bubbly was labelled and sold as Champagne for more than a century. Millions bought it and drank it in good faith as Champagne. But it never was the real thing; the wine from Champagne in France. Today Californian wine makers can still (legally under US law) label product as Champagne but few would do it. They would not want to be thought of as people of ill repute. In years to come labelling digipix as photographs will seem just as tacky.

Don't agree. Or with the analogy.

I think confusing the process with the goal is not correct. For me being an analog photographer for 30 years and digital photographer for around 5 years and the exclusive printer of both, the tools used is not the real point. The point is the print. What goes on the wall. A artistic likeness of a subject.

We can debate the process and love of process, but using the process as the whole point seems wrong.

We can argue a beautiful processed silver gelatin print is better/worse than a beautifully processed inkjet print but there are two viewers involved. The creator and the buyer/appreciator. And framed and under glass, what the buyer/appreciator is more moved by is subject matter, not process. What the creator values could be process or subject matter or both but what process it took to get it on the wall probably should not be the deciding factor of what constitutes photography.

Until I can look at something and think it onto the wall, then the process of using a camera and an image manipulator (computer or enlarger or chemistry) is to me, photography.

 

[keithwms]

I don't think the art of photography is in decline or the end is near or any of that. Not for an instant.

Those who remain committed to analogue / traditional processes will (I keep saying over and over!) be delighted to find that their work is valued more as time goes by. I see this very clearly.

Those who get involved with digital and hybrid processes will see more interesting and individual capabilities and a steady improvement in standards; we just have to remember that digital photography is still in its youth, relatively speaking, and still has quite a long way to go.

On both sides -analogue and digital- there are those people who bitch and moan and think things have gone to hell and the art is finished. Whatever. That's just a completely useless and de-motivating point of view. What these people want remains an enduring mystery. A warm bottle and a blankie? Whatever. Adapt or perish.

 

[zsas]

I'm not saying that home decor will all change and what we have today will disappear, but it very well could be less prevalent or far more exclusive.

I posted this before but this is interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38

Interesting video, gosh if I woke up to all that "stuff" I would have a heart attack, can't even bush your teeth w/o being bothered. What is funny to me is that Microsoft came out with one of those future visions of the world videos a month or so ago, and the Microsoft video is essentially the same as the one Corning made...odd how they think we will be so connected...sigh....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0

 

[MaximusM3]

I don't think the art of photography is in decline or the end is near or any of that. Not for an instant.

Those who remain committed to analogue / traditional processes will (I keep saying over and over!) be delighted to find that their work is valued more as time goes by. I see this very clearly.

Those who get involved with digital and hybrid processes will see more interesting and individual capabilities and a steady improvement in standards; we just have to remember that digital photography is still in its youth, relatively speaking, and still has quite a long way to go.

On both sides -analogue and digital- there are those people who bitch and moan and think things have gone to hell and the art is finished. Whatever. That's just a completely useless and de-motivating point of view. What these people want remains an enduring mystery. A warm bottle and a blankie? Whatever. Adapt or perish.

I believe that you are 100% correct, Keith. The appreciation for analogue/traditional processes will remain strong and will increase as time goes by, positively. Digital may have made it more difficult to stand out, but when one does, it makes the hard work even more rewarding. Those who bitch and moan, on both sides of the pond, are just wasting time and losing focus (pun intended).

 

[zsas]

Well said Max and Keith!

 

[Paul Goutiere]

What if they held a funeral for photography and everyone came, but they couldn't find the corpse?

 

[MattPC]

I think the 'general public' (ie me) are nowhere near as film averse as all this discussion implies. When in my local lab yesterday I asked how they managed to keep process and print cost so low. The nice young lady answered 'volume, we do around 2000 rolls a week'. She did qualify this with '5 years ago boss says we did 6000 a week, but we've been steady at 2000 for while now'. Clearly, much of that business has moved from other retail services that have closed but 2000 a week? Their process/print/frame/film space has about twice the floor area of their digital sales space.
Every time I'm in there, the counter has a queue. All sorts of people, mostly getting prints and/or enlargements and happy to pay. (I guess those $49 inkjets really don't beat the real thing after all!)
As to compositional quality, beauty is (as ever) in the eye of the beholder. Sure, images of teenagers at rock concerts in the rain/cute cats etc don't particularly interest me, but the images I make don't interest them either.
I'm not even convinced there's any shortage of work for 'pro's'. On my daily commute I pass 4 seperate photographers studio's. When out for lunch a week ago the wedding being photographed in the park had a team of 3 photographers complete with assistants! I think there's more pro photographers in my city than plumbers!
I'm inclined to think that many folks out there, after being dissappointed that their $800 digital investment failed to turn them into a pro (and/or discovered they needed another $800 worth of printer) go and get professional help for important images just like we always did.
As to art, my city seems to have constant photo exhibitions. new artists, established masters (cartier-bresson this year!). When recently commuting for work to a distant mining town, they had a couple of photo exhibitions that I went to while waiting for my flights. One of them was specificaly B&W with over 100 images! (in a coal mining town...)
I guess what I'm trying to say is: from my perspective, the whole scene looks at least as healthy as the broader economy. If you go looking for it. Passivley waiting for it to arrive will produce similar results to passively waiting for anything; random flashes of adequate, extremely rare good and no brilliance whatsoever.

MattPC

 

[Alan Klein]

How many people who sing and play guitar in friendly groups can compete with The Beetles? Do amateur artists feel they should give up what they do because they will never be a Van Gogh? Then why should people who take pictures and be creative for themselves and family and friends feel they have to compete with Avalon or Adams? Or you?

I belong to a local photo club. There are about 50 members mainly from 40 years old to those in their 70's. People who grew up with film snapshots. Except for the few who worked in photography as a trade, most never got beyond the 4"x6" snapshot of family, friends, vacations and parties. Maybe a 5"x7" now and then. Now in their later years they are learning Photoshop, cameras, editing and printing. OK, many print outside and may display on their HDTV's. But their pictures have "quality". To them! They are experimenting and being creative in their own right something the new photography has opened up to them. Creativity they never could experience before. And more people can do this then ever before. Do you think they don't get a "kick" out of what they produce as much as you do? Do you really think you're more creative then they are? And if you are, so what? Don't you think they have the right to be creative in their own way for themselves, families and friends?

 

[waynecrider]

I looked thru (American) Outdoor Photographer and Nature Photography magazines today at B&N and I got to say that there was a very larger percentage of pictures that were just plain crappy. Many looked like they were underexposed. There was a panoramic in Nature Photographer of Canyon De Chelly that looked like it was out of focus. I'm sure that probably 99% of the stuff was digital, and I'm not saying that digital is bad, especially in the right hands, but if this is an indication of what they think good photography is I'm wondering what they turned down?

 

[PKM-25]

Alan, I am talking about the whole idea of what photography is now being so different in 15-20 years that people ought to look at it in ways they might not have previously considered, art or snap shots, it is all changing waaay faster than ever before.

Photos are an assured non-exsistence without people to take them and people to view them. So it is people as individuals who will carry them forward, as snap shots, art, narrative or uploads. But the message is being swept up in the hype of the digital age and the internet age, at least it seems sometimes. I am not saying photography is doomed, I think just the opposite in many cases and with my decision to do a much higher percentage on film, I see the value in that coming full circle real quick.

But this is 15-20 years from now we are talking here, a ton happens in a year in this age, what this will all look like two decades from now is utterly baffling to me. Personally, I am very much looking forward to cranking out fresh new work years to come, but the whole of it all, the term photography, I bet it changes in ways we can not imagine right now in terms of the next 20 years.

 

[ambaker]

Photography is evolving, as it has from day one. The difference between photography, and other arts, is that current technology makes it easier and quicker to get acceptable results. There are plenty of people involved with painting and drawing. Most would be described as doodles, or worse, and there is paint by number for the super challenged.

With digital cameras, one can spray and pray till they get something "nice". With film, you usually hit the end of the roll, or your pocketbook first. So more planning, and care, is required. If you for off 200 shots as you walk around a subject, is that photography and art, or just dumb luck?

I don't see digital as the death of photography. I do see it as an impediment to learning the art of photography, if one isn't careful. I do own digital cameras, six or seven of them. I do not see them as a replacement for film.


---
I am here: http://tapatalk.com/map.php?v5kir2

 

[cliveh]

Don't agree. Or with the analogy.

I think confusing the process with the goal is not correct. For me being an analog photographer for 30 years and digital photographer for around 5 years and the exclusive printer of both, the tools used is not the real point. The point is the print. What goes on the wall. A artistic likeness of a subject.

We can debate the process and love of process, but using the process as the whole point seems wrong.

We can argue a beautiful processed silver gelatin print is better/worse than a beautifully processed inkjet print but there are two viewers involved. The creator and the buyer/appreciator. And framed and under glass, what the buyer/appreciator is more moved by is subject matter, not process. What the creator values could be process or subject matter or both but what process it took to get it on the wall probably should not be the deciding factor of what constitutes photography.

Until I can look at something and think it onto the wall, then the process of using a camera and an image manipulator (computer or enlarger or chemistry) is to me, photography.

I agree completely.

 

[hoffy]

tl/dr

Shoot more, worry less

 

[welly]

As not all writing is literature, not all photography is art. Sometimes it's just capturing memories.

And to j-dogg, some of these teenie-boppers, as you describe them, probably don't know what film is, never mind know how to load it. But then, I bet they can program a video recorder/torrent the latest movie better than you.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

I don't think the art of photography is in decline or the end is near or any of that. Not for an instant.

Those who remain committed to analogue / traditional processes will (I keep saying over and over!) be delighted to find that their work is valued more as time goes by. I see this very clearly.

Those who get involved with digital and hybrid processes will see more interesting and individual capabilities and a steady improvement in standards; we just have to remember that digital photography is still in its youth, relatively speaking, and still has quite a long way to go.

On both sides -analogue and digital- there are those people who bitch and moan and think things have gone to hell and the art is finished. Whatever. That's just a completely useless and de-motivating point of view. What these people want remains an enduring mystery. A warm bottle and a blankie? Whatever. Adapt or perish.

I raised the question with David Little, curator of photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and he and I agree with you Keith. The art will always float to the top, and it is not extinct, nor runs the risk of it.

My own opinion is that what has truly changed in photography isn't fundamentally the switch from one technology of making photographs to another, what has truly changed is VOLUME. There is so much of it today, that it takes some real determination to wade through all of the snapshots to get to the cream.

 

[benjiboy]

What disgusts me as a working professional are all the teenie-boppers with $500 DSLR's willing to work for free. Clients driven by our less-than-wonderful economy migrate to them and then get disappointed when they receive a crappy product, putting guys like me out of business. My location doesn't exactly help me either which is why I'm moving soon.

I'm not the best out there, but I'm decent, the kids I see getting into this have zero composition and are all "angles and dangles, bokeh, 300 shots of cats and flowers everything I shoot is pretty" None of them even know how to load a roll of film.

+1, Anybody with enough money can buy high end camera that is full of electronic technology that without any knowledge, training or study by the owner can produce sharp, correctly exposed, and colourful images, this doesn't make them photographers it makes them camera owners, any more than if they bought a Stradivarius violin would make them a violinist, but it doesn't prevent them from seeing it as an opportunity to make easy with the inevitable consequences of getting themselves involved in all sorts of trouble with their clients including law suits, and in the eyes of the general public giving professional photography a bad name.

P.S. I have no axe to grind, I have never been or wanted to be a pro.

 

[komla]

Digital has made photography available for even more people, why is that bad? Are we afraid that our club is not so cool anymore?

When it comes to music I had the impression that more bands play live because they make less money on selling CDs due to downlading.

 

[PKM-25]

It's not all bad that more people take photos because of digital, but it is not all hunky dory either.

Personally, I see making a good living off of what I do in 20 years, photography. But I am also getting ready for the biggest changes of all to come in the next 5-15 years. I have a feeling that between laws on the rise that Dead Link Removed with it's now even more invasive nature and the technology it self, you won't even begin to fathom those changes for awhile.

But they are coming and it is not all good. I know there will be many a happy photographer or photo enthusiast decades from now, but what it will look like is not what you might think...that is why I posted this, I think people on here are so distracted by the film versus digital debate that they are kind of blind to the bigger picture issues, like the digital versus people debate, photography as a language more than craft debate and how that is going to affect us all.

Yes, through the people who look at it and the people who make it, photography will be fine. But it is going to all change in ways that might make you wish for a time machine, it's part of a bigger picture problem of too much digital everything, much too fast. Because I shoot not just for a passion or a job, but a life, I look at these much bigger picture trends and what they might do.

Technology is it's own best hype machine, it's called the association game. "He says it is the hottest thing out, so it must be, golly gee, I better try it, I don't want to be left behind." Photography has been the poster child of that for at least 10 years in current form and it is only going to get worse. The good news is that when you talk to people off of the net, all is OK in the world, including photography, the hype is just that, hype.

But this *is* going to change photography and what is considered a photograph in even more profound ways than we can imagine...

Think about it man, 20 years from now?

Digital has made photography available for even more people, why is that bad? Are we afraid that our club is not so cool anymore?

When it comes to music I had the impression that more bands play live because they make less money on selling CDs due to downlading.

 

[CGW]

It's not all bad that more people take photos because of digital, but it is not all hunky dory either.

Personally, I see making a good living off of what I do in 20 years, photography. But I am also getting ready for the biggest changes of all to come in the next 5-15 years. I have a feeling that between laws on the rise that Dead Link Removed with it's now even more invasive nature and the technology it self, you won't even begin to fathom those changes for awhile.

But they are coming and it is not all good. I know there will be many a happy photographer or photo enthusiast decades from now, but what it will look like is not what you might think...that is why I posted this, I think people on here are so distracted by the film versus digital debate that they are kind of blind to the bigger picture issues, like the digital versus people debate, photography as a language more than craft debate and how that is going to affect us all.

Yes, through the people who look at it and the people who make it, photography will be fine. But it is going to all change in ways that might make you wish for a time machine, it's part of a bigger picture problem of too much digital everything, much too fast. Because I shoot not just for a passion or a job, but a life, I look at these much bigger picture trends and what they might do.

Technology is it's own best hype machine, it's called the association game. "He says it is the hottest thing out, so it must be, golly gee, I better try it, I don't want to be left behind." Photography has been the poster child of that for at least 10 years in current form and it is only going to get worse. The good news is that when you talk to people off of the net, all is OK in the world, including photography, the hype is just that, hype.

But this *is* going to change photography and what is considered a photograph in even more profound ways than we can imagine...

Think about it man, 20 years from now?

Time to pass the bong...

 

[X. Phot.]

Chicken Little is hurrying
Umbrella 'neath her wing.
She thinks the sky is falling fast
So goes to tell the King.
But, after she has spread the news
And all is told and said
The good old King just laughs at her
And sends her home instead.


BTW, who is this Utah Bill?

 

[PKM-25]

OK, I get it, put Chicken Little in the bong and smoke it I guess. It's food for thought not served by your mother, read, you don't have to eat it.

 

[WMRphoto]

I didn't read the whole thread, so I apologize for my laziness and if my point has been stated. I get the feeling this conversation has happened before in the history of photography. When Kodak brought out the Brownie and other cheap cameras followed and almost everyone had access to a camera, so much so that there were probably billions of actual negatives that existed at one point. Or when the cheap SLR's or point and shoots were developed. I think the thing that has changed is that everyone now can post all of their photos to millions of people, instead of the handful of people dragged to see the latest vacation slides from 'Tommy and Edna's big car trip out west' . I think this instant access to everything has not only affected photography it has affected all parts of society.

 

[photoworks68]

Photography is going through its second great social transition. The first was the development of hand cameras and the first Kodak--you push the button and we do the rest. The technical expertise required to practice photography was significantly lowered and photography became accessible to nearly everyone. Pictorialism was a reaction to the mass production of photography and and an attempt to emphasize craftsmanship and establish photography as a fine art.

The issue today isn't digital itself, but the reduction of the required technical expertise for the practice of photography to essentially zero. Digital enabled the easy and instantaneous production of photography along with the means to easily alter the image. In digital, everything is infinitely malleable. Digital also enabled the rise of social media to create a visible stream for this mass production of images. It's human nature to attract attention--hence the rise of bad HDR and other forms of grotesque manipulation needed to rise above the noise of the image stream. The starving off of arts education and the suppression of the value of the arts in our culture guarantees the domination of a kitsch aesthetic.

Teaching and demonstrating wet plate collodion, I emphasize that photographers should freely draw on every photographic process just as other artists choose from a rich and diverse set of processes. The good news is that the same forces that created the image stream are driving many serious photographers back into what we foolishly term "historical processes".

The thing is that now, one by one, manufacturer are stopping making film. First there was polaroid stopping making instant film, then kodak stopping making Kodachrome and now Ektachrome film, What next ? Color and Black and white film ? At least a musician can still chose to play with an analog instrument. Soon, a photographer will not have any choice but to use digital in order to pursue photography. That time may be coming sooner than later and I dread it.

 

[PKM-25]

I think this instant access to everything has not only affected photography it has affected all parts of society.

This is really it in a nutshell.

I don't live in fear of losing photography day in day out, hardly. But I think that with recent hotbed threads like Kodak C-11 and the whole 101010 thing in general, it might be a good time to look even deeper into bigger picture happenings to gain perspective in what might be afoot for photography itself in the coming years.

It's not a call to arms, it's a call to take a closer look.