Where does the rapid evolution of photography leave us

I do highest level, in-your-face candid work, and am the world leader in circular fisheye and infrared flash street photography. I won't be switching to a cell phone any time soon, the type of work I do can't be done well with a cell phone. In fact, I don't even own a smart phone. (But that is because I can't afford the monthly bill.) But from what I see, cell phones produce amazing photos for just having a little chip of glass for a lens.

Eastman House - Fair Use

...remember photogs...don't take photos of people without their permission!

I see not difference in todays photo world than that of 30 years ago, before digital there were millions of people taking crappy photo's and today there still are millions, the Iphone has replaced the minilabs and eliminated a lot of low paying jobs and replaced them with off shore factory jobs making the Iphones.

We are blessed that most people don't print their photos.

I think this clip represents of what is artisanal.

Bob Carnie said:

..., before digital there were millions of people taking crappy photo's and today there still are millions, ...We are blessed that most people don't print their photos.

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there are lots of great photos done digitally, and TENS of million of crappy photo's as before. so few digital photo's are printed, there are no shoeboxes of old photo's anymore and hundreds of billions of images will be lost in the digital morass.

maybe some of the photo's you have hanging on the wall will be the ones that people point to as examples of "the good ole days" when photographs were "real"

What's killing photography, at least from the standpoint of the professional photographer, doesn't have anything to do with technology. It has to do with the corporate mindset. Sure, the Sears family photo has died off, but that job never paid well anyway. But pretty much every other photography job is still around (minus minilabs and such). Your average consumer really only pays for professional photography on their wedding day. What has always powered the professional photographer industry is the business world. And that's where the problem lies.

Businesses these days often don't want quality. They want value. They're not run by people who are artistically inclined nor are they able to judge good work from bad work. What they are able to judge, is cheap work from expensive work. And it's hard for them to understand the difference between a $1,000 product photo and a free photo they took themselves of the same product. They'd rather spend their advertising budget on the quantity of exposure than the quality of that exposure. Thanks to today's stock price mindset of short term goals, companies are no longer interested in public identity or long term viability. They're just interested in maximizing profit for the next quarter. If the company gets a bad reputation, they'll buy another name and rebrand or merge with someone else. Worst case scenario, they sell out and cash in, and the rich movers and shakers invest in something else while the little guys get stuck holding the bag.

And that mindset isn't just killing the professional photographer. It's also killing the creative writer and the graphic designer too. Basically any artistic job has almost zero value in corporate America today. Meanwhile, we have corporate boardrooms filled people drawing high salaries doing ceremonial tasks.

So cheap, quality camera gear doesn't hurt anyone (other than minilabs and camera manufacturers). Artisanal photography is still around and doing well, as any artisanal sector has, thanks in large part to the millennial generation and their love of things handmade. It's just if you're doing artisanal things, you have to market it to them, which can be hard to do if you're not one of them. The older generations don't tend to value that kind of work as highly. They'd generally rather spend their money on the highest value proposition of tangible things than an experience or something individualistic, as a whole. So if you want to sell your hand made photos, wax your mustache, grab a microbrew, and set up a pop up shop next to that pretentious coffee store.

slackercrurster:
There is something about your comments that should be explored. For one, I would be very interested in knowing WHY you were banned from such social media. Perhaps that banning says more about the social media shallowness than it says about your 'waywardness'. We are living in a very challenged culture, in that we know not what 'social format' to hone ourselves into and, in essence, we are forced to be 'feeling in the dark' for direction. Those in your 100 year old poster seemed to be more aware of the certainty of their collective likes and dislikes. They were not attempting to be so 'politically correct'. I once knew a black man, about my age, back in 1971 who came from Florida and he said that under segregation at least one knew where he stood. I could not deny that important fact.

Why does Photrio and many other photo fora exist? Why, when 'better' cameras are available which make 'just as good' pictures without using film? Why are there no shortage of new turntables that are being manufactured which cost into the thousands, indeed, tens of thousands or more, to play LPs that died thirty years ago? Something is afoot here ... especially when so many adherents of this old technology are a lot younger than David Lyga.

This old technology allows us to witness the process without trusting or theorizing. We see the negative image and we can see the grooves in that LP. But is that enough to justify the 'need' for this battered technology of yesterday? I do not know but I do know that this old technology has refused to die.

Why? I do not know but I DO know that if everything photographic becomes 'mirrorless' some day, there will still be available to us a reflection of what that mirror used portray in terms not only of the manifestation of a hard image, but also a re-confirmation that our collective sensibilities might not have been so skewed back then, despite the unrelenting, ongoing advances in technology whose sole purposes are money and 'efficiency'. - David Lyga

His main point is that to remain in business, a pro photographer has to distinguish himself or herself with photos that stand out - composition, content, lighting, interest. They must keep up with the latest things people are interested in. The average person with their cell phone is not going to do these things so their pictures will be ho hum. Just like it was years ago with film cameras, 35mm, 120's, 110's, etc. At least we're not cutting down so many trees to print all those snaps.

With all the cellphones around and people taking selfies, these same people want professional looking results. I just got off of a cruise ship where there were many photographers. Couples and families were deliberately getting dressed up to have formal pictures taken by these pros in front of fancy backgrounds, lighting, etc. The photographer took them through the process telling them how to interact, stand, bend, sit etc. I even bought a $20 picture of me and my wife taken while we were eating. For a 8x10". The shot was handed to us while eating in a glossy folder and my wife "ate it up". People still love prints to frame, blowups, etc, stuff they don't do themselves and looking like a pro did it, although frankly I thought our print was very poorly done, pasty with improper light balance. But my wife loved it.

there's nothing new under the sun ...

What benefits does mirrorless have over dslr?

Bob Carnie said:

We are blessed that most people don't print their photos.

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This printing likely is the sole reason that we still have RA-4.

John51 said:

What benefits does mirrorless have over dslr?

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It took many years for SLR cameras to really compete with the "mirrorless" Leica rangefinder cameras. Eventually SLR viewfinders became competitive in some ways. My mirrorless Panasonic Lumix G permits magnified through-the-lens focusing, a shortcoming of the Nikon SLRs I used for decades. The Lumix has been modified for deep infrared photography, for which it is more convenient than IR film. Mirrors were mechanically complex and introduced a delay in shutter activation, a big handicap in sports and some other photography.

John51 said:

What benefits does mirrorless have over dslr?

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DSLR (and SLR) lenses had to be designed to accommodate the mirror box, which forced the lens further from the film plane, which in turn diminished image quality.

Additionally, of course, mirrorless are far smaller and far lighter than SLRs. SLRs still have viewfinder advantages over mirrorless, but that's viewfinder think rather than photo-making think... and it ignores the fact that both are best when viewed with a large monitor (the way professionals often do it)..

I, the interplanetary leader in telephoto images of crustaceans, agree with the OP. We're headed in the mirrorless direction, for reasons of economy and quality.

It leaves me with choices of the best of the film cameras and lenses at low, low prices. If there is a film camera out there I decide I want, I buy it and its lenses without hesitating.

slackercrurster said:

...remember photogs...don't take photos of people without their permission!

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... without consulting your local laws and ordinances.

In short, photography is conflated with surveillance thanks to modern technology and paparazzi culture.

Images are more powerful than ever and can radically alter a subject's life in the blink of an eye. Not so much the photographer's, however.

I've been mirrorless for a long time...I like the GG.

But photography has always been on an evolutionary path...some of us just like the fruit of the lower branches

Vaughn said:

I've been mirrorless for a long time...I like the GG.

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and he drops the mic ...

David Lyga said:

I do not know but I do know that this old technology has refused to die.

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The post-modern philosopher Jacques Derrida coined the term "hauntology". I'm not an instinctive post-modernist, but he was definitely on to something. Basically it's the sense that something is neither dead nor alive but continues in a kind of deferred state. In a photographic context someone might recall APS film, the advertising, the promise it held, the design of the cameras. Although the film format has been consigned to history and the cameras are mostly paperweights, the idea of APS lives on as a thing. The same is true of so much technology, even quite recent objects which have been superseded too rapidly for our minds to make sense of them, and for reasons over which we have no control. Compact audio discs, tape camcorders, old computer games, once fashionable sports shoes, the music heroes of our youth still have a gravity that won't be dismissed by time or commercial redundancy.

Digital cameras are suffering from this continued cycle of updating, to the point where Canon's CEO suggests the consumer digital camera may be in its death throes. This is partly because there's little perceivable difference between an image taken on a 10mp camera from 2006 and a 24 or 42mp camera from 2019 in normal lighting, and partly a weariness with the same relentless hyperbole at their launch. We have become jaded at the unfulfilled promise of more, faster, better, newer, and seek something that won't have disappeared between reading the brochure and mastering the menus.

blockend:

'deferred state' is probably the best definition I have yet heard.

The specific technology is not worshiped, not really adhered to ('relevant' website popularity is deceptive to most, as far as the general population is concerned), or even 'known' among the hoi polloi, but, nevertheless, maintains a continued relevance to many. In my heart I 'know' that digital color is, at least theoretically, superior in most aspects but adhere to the (technical, or at least aesthetic) supremacy of traditional B&W.

What you correctly state is very necessary to impart not only for those who still use this technology but also for those who do not. To relegate such technologies to a simple waste-bin is not only mean and nasty but highly suspect to one's real understanding. Yes, for one, I, also, am sick of the nonstop hype regarding digital and now, there is reason to believe that the DSLR is on the waning track rather than the winning track. Much remains to be seen but one thing is for certain: technology is not owned by only ONE self-interest or profit motive. - David Lyga

I don't see film aficionados as a hautology, i.e. "pining for a future that never arrived", but as simply continuing to use a technology which has been superseded in the mainstream, which can be from differing reasons, including nostalgia or aesthetic considerations. You also cannot rule out an underlying need to be perceived as being different.

I think this thread is like the "why do we do film photography" threads. I do it because its a lot of fun. Not to say the electronic stuff isn't fun, but I love a surprise, I love seeing what happens and even if it didn't work out the way I had hoped it was a lot of fun. IDK there is always a lot of "doom and gloom" about how people who use film and paper ( and the other analogue stuff ) to make images are luddites or throwbacks or don't want to learn / do new stuff .. and I think a lot of that "talk" has to do with people who no longer use those materials and they have to justify everything but understand how much fun it can be. There is a guy down the road who has a 73 flat windshield vw bug that passes me from time to time. he's missing the cover of to his engine compartment, and driving a death trap considering he has no air bags and nothing infront of him when a SUV driver is distracted and hits him, but he's driving it because there is nothing more fun than driving a simple low powered "slug bug" you can fix yourself ( with a book " ... for the complete idiot " ) that gets you from point a to point b and puts a smile on peoples faces as you vroom by them. its the same sort of thing. chemical photography is just puttering along the same way, with out a book called " how to make photographs for the complete idiot"...

faberryman said:

I don't see film aficionados as a hautology, i.e. "pining for a future that never arrived", but as simply continuing to use a technology which has been superseded in the mainstream, which can be from differing reasons, including nostalgia or aesthetic considerations. You also cannot rule out an underlying need to be perceived as being different.

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One of the features of the postmodern, if I remember my notes correctly, was simultaneity of past and present rather than the new replacing the old, which had been the convention. The web has been one of the enablers of pluralism, connecting enthusiasts for the arcane and forgotten through cutting edge technology. Ironically the very digital technology that killed the film camera in the mainstream, was the one that maintains it in the margins. Flatbed scanners and DSLR negative conversion, with web scans for the remaining darkroom printers. A language shared through time zones and culture.

As I steeped myself in a new off-camera flash system yesterday, I pondered the fact that exhausting its functions would have comprised a skilled job for someone 50 years previously. Now we're expected to accommodate its numerous possibilities between tea and supper. The biologist Rupert Sheldrake proposed the idea of "morphic resonance", the notion of inherited and evolving memory. Thus, the birth pangs of a new idea, a crystalline form, a skateboard trick, rats avoiding a new poison become unremarkable and infants delve into computer programmes without inhibition.

faberryman said:

I don't see film aficionados as a hautology, i.e. "pining for a future that never arrived", but as simply continuing to use a technology which has been superseded in the mainstream, which can be from differing reasons, including nostalgia or aesthetic considerations. You also cannot rule out an underlying need to be perceived as being different.

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All those things and also it provides a sense of simplicity, stability and security in an ever changing world. I just went on another vacation, the first in a year. Before I left, I had to spend an hour or two going through all the voluminous menus OF MY DIGITAL CAMERA, making sure the settings were correct and reminding myself how to operate the camera. On vacation, I avoided manual settings, using P all the way, wanting to just relax and take impromptu snaps, which came out fine for the slide show I;ll do on my 4K TV. I also enjoy the new tech. But there is something nice about shooting simply which film cameras can provide. Well, I still double expose my film shots now and then.

blockend said:

One of the features of the postmodern, if I remember my notes correctly, was simultaneity of past and present rather than the new replacing the old, which had been the convention. The web has been one of the enablers of pluralism, connecting enthusiasts for the arcane and forgotten through cutting edge technology. Ironically the very digital technology that killed the film camera in the mainstream, was the one that maintains it in the margins. Flatbed scanners and DSLR negative conversion, with web scans for the remaining darkroom printers. A language shared through time zones and culture.

As I steeped myself in a new off-camera flash system yesterday, I pondered the fact that exhausting its functions would have comprised a skilled job for someone 50 years previously. Now we're expected to accommodate its numerous possibilities between tea and supper. The biologist Rupert Sheldrake proposed the idea of "morphic resonance", the notion of inherited and evolving memory. Thus, the birth pangs of a new idea, a crystalline form, a skateboard trick, rats avoiding a new poison become unremarkable and infants delve into computer programmes without inhibition.

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Maybe, we're just getting old.