Is Photography As We Know It Dying?

[ARJ3717]

Operating a device to capture images is not dead.
Being a practitioner of the craft of photography seems to have gone out of style a ways back. I'm referring to those around when darkrooms, film loaders, and chemistry were the popular items of the day. Loading film into a camera, processing, printing, viewing slides, enlargements, etc.. etc. left town when the digital age approached.

The disposable camera on every table at a wedding was signal enough of the door for beginning to close. Today we witness the age of "Everyone is a Photographer." Digital cameras, cell phones, and other electronic devices have simply hurried along the process to where we are now.
Many craftsmen of photography have left, leaving today's electronic media for the push-button instant gratification generation.
Professionals became professional by learning and practicing many facets of the process. The hours of education, workshops, trade shows, classes, presentations, all helping further along the knowledge required to produce a fine print or stellar slide in the projector.
Ever wonder how many people today access information on the film manufacturers' web page concerning developer choices, development time, agitation, clearing, fixing, and drying? - Likely only a few select individual professional craftsmen!
Getting lucky with a couple of cell phone shots then posting to social media isn't really anything other than just getting lucky.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

I like tapping into this thread, because I find other folks views interesting.

Being a good film photographer is like being a good stagecoach driver. Even if you are the worlds best, your career choices are limited. It is essentially doing something the hard way, when a far easier approach is available.

One can argue the relative merits of film over digital but it is the consumer, not the photographer, that determines what a good photograph is. Over the decades that has changes from tin-types, to several black and white paper processes, to color prints and slides, to LED video devices.

The beauty of it is; one can slave over the dark room processes applying their years of accumulated knowledge to chemicals, film and paper; or one can slave for hours with post processing, applying their hard earned skills tweaking the perfect digital print. Either approach provides satisfaction to the doer.

Personally I like black and white photography, I find digital is easier and a great time saver, but for me occasionally setting aside time to tinker in the dark with film, chemicals and paper has its own merits.

 

[mrca]

I doubt there is much demand for stage coach drivers, but the last time I sent in my film for development, instead of about week turn around it was more like nearly 4 weeks. I agree beauty is in the eye of the checkbook holder as Bambi Cantrell said, but most people are not skilled photographers or artists. An artist must take the time to educate them so they appreciate and treasure the subtle differences between film and digital. I sell prints up to 24x36 that I hand print on paper rated for 200/400 years. When you print large, those subtle difference lost on a cell phone or monitor become much more apparent. Digital is more like McDonalds, punching out another identical burger over and over efficiently and cheaply. But go to Ruth Crists steak house, yes, it is a burger, yes, there is a smaller pool of potential clients, but there are none the less people who appreciate the difference. Same with taking photos that go to the soul of the subject. My most treasured image after nearly 60 years of photographing is a boy pinning a bracelet on a woman's wrist. He has a tender expression and I have cropped part of the womans face in post. Would never make a magazine cover. But to the mother who's son who has had cancer from 8 to 13 and never held a job, the bracelet he just won in a restaurant game is probably the first and last gift he ever earned and gave to her. I conceived the shot in a split second and had to shoot through my tears while choking up. Actually had to step back and say, like in top gun, get back in there Maverick, to myself to keep shooting and a guy was nice enough to stop beside me not walking through the shot because they had announced it was an event for this dying boy in the wheel chair with half of his face stroked out. After he got it on her wrist and his mother wheeled his chair left, I turned right so she couldn't see my tears and I realized the guy who stopped was inches from me. As I looked up to thank him for not walking through the shot I was surprised to see a gang banger about 6'5 and as I looked up saw tears streaming down his cheeks. When I explain the shot to someone, I can watch the tears welling up in the eyes of even the toughest man. The print ended up on his casket 3 months later. Taking photos that are powerful for the people involved have little impact on people who don't know the story behind what has been captured. But once it is explained, people appreciate it. Same with the gorgeous grain or skin tones from 3200 film or portra, the butter soft tonal transitions, the unique look of a medium format film image. Hey, a yugo gets you from point A to point B but bmw, mercedes sell cars that cost a much as 100k. However, if your photographs are only the quality of a yugo, you had better be one hell of a marketer. Taking just another crap image but on film, is still a crap image.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

mrca

Yes your points are well made, but it is the subject matter that makes a fine print. Usually emotions play a large part in the definition of fine. Some of the dearest photos are painfully poor but they mean very much to the people involved. Whether a photo is a Yugo or a Mercedes depends on the viewer; case in point is to try and take a first grader's pictures off the ice box, if they are precious to his or her mom.

To answer the op's question, photography is like music, it is alive and well. However, "photography as we know it", depends on what you like and do not like. Even the most skilled artisan who's photographic craftsmanship puts other's work to shame, will be out done and by meritocracy if their work simply does not appeal to their intended market.

 

[Glostars]

I think Photography is just evolving, not dying. Things change or disappear, that's how it is in many industries. Photography, a few centuries ago, was accessible for just a few. Now, it is for everyone who has a phone. Photography, as an art, is changing rapidly just as technology changes. It is so easy nowadays to share information worldwide. In just seconds I can see and hear what is going on in the other side of the world. When the first cameras appeared that was something unthinkable. Now Internet, smartphones, image sharing apps, YouTube make everything possible for anybody, regardless their experience in photography, can shoot, edit and share great images with anybody online.
Professional photographers will have to adapt to the change. They can still make wonders with the lens. But let's face it, a teenager with an expensive smartphone will be capable of doing more than the most skillful photographer one or two decades ago.
Just my thoughts, I might be wrong. I love photography and I love the work of a good photographer.

All the best!

 

[AlanKlein]

We’ve all seen posts on social media of some crooked horizon overly saturated slightly out of focus sunset photo that gets 1000 likes from the poster’s “friends” who all comment how amazing it is and encourage the poster to turn pro.

Yup say hello to the "like culture" where self gratification is the norm. Heaven forbid you'd actually post the truth about their photos. Actually even FB has finally realized the monster it created Facebook Is Considering a Huge Shift That Would Dramatically Change How You Use the Social Network--It's a Good Thing

I don’t have a problem with Facebook or Instagram “likes”. My comment was more focused on the fact that people like the sub standard photo.

I grew up with photo albums. Those shots weren't all too terrific either. Mainly just people standing in front of the camera, smiling at it, with a statue in someplace they visited. People have been shooting snapshots for 100 years. It's just that now more people can see them. Before, you'd have to invite them over and make dinner before you could pull out the albums or show them in your slideshow. Then, they'd feign a headache and run home before you could show it even giving up their dessert pie and coffee. Now we pull out our phones and embarrass them into watching forty pictures of the same thing from the same angle. It makes you want to poke your eyes out.

 

[AlanKlein]

mrca

Yes your points are well made, but it is the subject matter that makes a fine print. Usually emotions play a large part in the definition of fine. Some of the dearest photos are painfully poor but they mean very much to the people involved. Whether a photo is a Yugo or a Mercedes depends on the viewer; case in point is to try and take a first grader's pictures off the ice box, if they are precious to his or her mom.

To answer the op's question, photography is like music, it is alive and well. However, "photography as we know it", depends on what you like and do not like. Even the most skilled artisan who's photographic craftsmanship puts other's work to shame, will be out done and by meritocracy if their work simply does not appeal to their intended market.

When you look at a picture of a person you love, you fall in love all over again.

 

[Original katomi]

Re above post I have to agree.
So many pics I have of Mrs were taken on the phone because that’s what I had with me, that and she did not like pic taken
The phone allowed me to get pics that I would not get once I pulled out a DSLR
Now that she has died those photos are now even more important

 

[AlanKlein]

Re above post I have to agree.
So many pics I have of Mrs were taken on the phone because that’s what I had with me, that and she did not like pic taken
The phone allowed me to get pics that I would not get once I pulled out a DSLR
Now that she has died those photos are now even more important

I'm sorry about your wife. There's a lot to be said for snapshots.

 

[mrca]

Some of my most awarded images were taken with a 10 mp camera and one of the worst nikon lenses in 2007. It isn't the gear that makes the photo, its the photographer. Ancil said the most important part of a camera is the 12 inches behind it. But if you are trying to shoot in low light, or need extra reach, beautiful bokeh, or wide angle or want to make a large print, sorry, those cell phones won't do it. Just h ad someone come to me to see if I could make a 16x20 print from a heavily cropped 5 mp photo. He was hiking so didn't want to carry the weight back in 2007. Katomi, that is why when I photoed weddings I made sure to photo all the older folks. Many times it was the last good photo taken of them.

 

[smoke665]

Re above post I have to agree.
So many pics I have of Mrs were taken on the phone because that’s what I had with me, that and she did not like pic taken
The phone allowed me to get pics that I would not get once I pulled out a DSLR
Now that she has died those photos are now even more important

Sorry about that, the loss of a loved one is always hard, but even the worst of images still give connections to the memories. What if your situation had been reversed and you passed first, would she have had any photos of you??? I think about this often, but have yet to come up with a good solution. I'm always the one behind the camera....always the one taking pictures. When the day comes, there's not a whole lot of photographic evidence that I was even here. Sure I've tried the group photos, selfies, and the occasional portrait, but they just don't come as easily as firing off those photos of family.

 

[mrca]

Smoke great point for those of us who prefer to be behind the camera. I am a portrait photographer who provides signed prints to my clients on paper with a 200/400 color/b&w life. I have a photo taken of my father and family in 1919 on the wall behind me, wonderful studio shot, beautiful light, classic pose of 5 people and all have their eyes open even with the long exposure of the day. The photographer didn't sign the print and I wish I knew who he was but decades from now, long after I'm gone, people will be cherishing those prints, my legacy...and printed on epson legacy papers.

 

[Original katomi]

No there is not a lot of photos of me

 

[smoke665]

long after I'm gone, people will be cherishing those prints, my legacy...and printed on epson legacy papers.

But what about you????????? Will your family have "legacy prints" of you to cherish, or will they be like so many of the rest of us.....without???

@Original katomi Same here, and I bet the same holds true for most photographers.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Photos and memories are inseparable. I remember an old picture of my great-uncle in his military uniform. A cropped photo of him sitting on and Arabian stallion, he had his pointed helmet and his lance in hand. The photo was hung above my Grandparent's piano in the parlor. Oh the many adventures that ran through my young mind.

It was many years later my uncle told me that my great-uncle was a machine gunner in World War I, most likely drafted into the Prussia or Russian Army. The photos were staged studio prints, sent home by the solders.

No matter, many decades later I can still imaging him as the mighty Lancer, charging off to battle. Photos and memories are inseparable.