pbromaghin
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What a wonderful print.
Not mine, but one of many of Paris taken by a good friend, Jean-François Cléroux.
Somewhat ironically, it is rather on-topic for this thread!
Borrowed from his currently work in progress website, found here: https://www.cleroux.com/
View attachment 419873
Which reminds me - I need to phone Francois to talk to him about his latest website tweaks.
What a wonderful print.
On a very nice afternoon, golden hour, I was walking through the streets in the village of Chamonix, when I see this bridge with a beautiful railing and a gorgeous landscape, just behind it. I had to stop and take a picture.
But there was this girl and her boyfriend, right in the middle of the frame I wanted to shoot. She was posing like a model and he was taking pictures of her. She would go and look into the phone every two or three clicks. Then she would try a different pose. Then without the jacket. Then with a hat. And another pose… I was just patiently waiting for around 15 minutes. And they wouldn’t quit.
All of modern photography was built on snapshot photography with cheap cameras and film processing to encourage film sales. This migrated to vacation slides, slide shows, and Polaroids.
For nearly a century, everyman capturing the days of their lives photographically was a staple that built Kodak, especially, into the monster they were.
Cell phones are just the latest instrument in an unbroken chain that started with Brownies and ended with SLRs.
It is an idealized fiction that the Good Old Days were better and that people on holidays were more engaged with the environment. Then-, as now, it depends a whole lot on the person and the venue.
The only thing that is almost unarguably worse today, is the larger society's lack of decorum, politeness, and mannered behaviour which is really what underlies the obnoxious habits noted in this thread...
I’ll take the bitching every time over the patronizing, sickly-sweet all-sidesing goo.
I've been in similar situations where I had to abandon my choice of photograph, but the truth is they have as much right to be taking pictures there as you do.
Some wonderful street photography in his portfolio. It amounts to a nice commentary on Parisian life. I like what he's done with the Eiffel Tower shot: by choosing a long exposure he's turned the tourists who would have been obstructing his shot into semi-transparent ghosts who just add texture and focus to the real subject.Not mine, but one of many of Paris taken by a good friend, Jean-François Cléroux.
Somewhat ironically, it is rather on-topic for this thread!
Borrowed from his currently work in progress website, found here: https://www.cleroux.com/
View attachment 419873
Which reminds me - I need to phone Francois to talk to him about his latest website tweaks.
That's wonderful! Lingerie is a French word, after all.
Pre-smart phones, there were many people who experienced their vacations looking through the viewfinder of their Instamatic or other point and shoot… Or even with the top 35mm. It is easier now…no one leaves their ‘camera’ behind.
Many iPhone vacationers have family and friends who expect images daily…to the point where WiFi at resorts can be slow all evening as visitors start sending images off into the void…think of all the words saved!!
There has always been bad actors…even if things stay the same otherwise, double the population and you double the number of assholes. And it takes only one to stand out in the crowd and sour a day.
But I got one of my favorite images with the help of two hikers who lingered along the trail to watch a waterfall. The wonderful light just kept getting better and better as I waited with the 5x7 set up 30 meters away. The enforced patience paid off.
That does look silly. At the same time, I think the concept is likely to take off in the next few years. Not with VR glasses, but simply using one's phone to view augmented-reality overlays. Seems really promising to me.But the silliest thing I think I have seen on vacation was a tour group wearing VR headsets instead of looking at the real thing they were in front of.
Without photographers taking photos of people on vacation, there would be no Martin Parr.
Maybe the level of tourists will go down when the most popular tourist locations can be simulated from home with VR headsets. And we can do the photography without crowds again.
Maybe twenty years ago I was involved in a panel discussion of new cinematic technology at a film conference. There was an academic guy there who was showing off his new idea of having VR headsets with a virtual Paul Robeson giving guided tours of Harlem with images of old Harlem superimposed over the pesent-day cityscape. One of the panelists asked the obvious question, which ended the discussion: "So you've got a guy wearing funny glasses walking around the streets of New York talking to someone who's not there; how long do you think he's going to live?"
Unless you're trapped in a subway car with him, or the street is 20 lanes wide.
Seems like he took pictures of......
Without photographers taking photos of people on vacation, there would be no Martin Parr.
He didn’t take thousands of selfies.
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