The Fauxtographer and the Daguerreotypist

[amolitor]

I wrote this short essay for my blog, but since it's partly a response to things I have read on here, I thought it would be appropriate, or at least interesting, to reproduce it here.

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In the mid nineteenth century there was a revolution in portraiture. The Daguerreotype become widely available, and popular. Everyone, it seemed, had their portrait made on a funny little grey plate by the funny little fellow down the street. The people selling this service were often hacks, hustlers, and charlatans. The Daguerreotypist was likely selling patent medicines last year, and would be operating a hypnotism show the next. The results, naturally, were a bit variable.

The painters were enraged. The work was awful, by their standards. The image was tiny, albeit detailed. It was not even colored! That marvelous detail captured the subjects flaws just as thoroughly as their good points. It had all manner of weird artifacts due to the long exposure. The people making this things had no skills, particularly, there was no craft to this process. Why, a man could learn to make a Daguerreotype in only a few days! The work was, basically, crap. People loved them, ignored the painters, and bought them by the millions.

The Daguerreotype was not a painting, and did not pretend to be. It was something the customer could not do for himself. It was quick. Something that was good enough to suit the need or desire of the customer at the time. It was also cheap and widely available. The result is, among other things, a fantastically deep and interesting record of socioeconomic classes that had never been given a visual record before.

Of course, in the long run, photography won. Those hustlers and crooks shooting tiny, bad, portraits helped to birth this new form. They helped to set new standards, they contributed to the new aesthetic of visual art and of portraiture which we see today. The painters had their say, our modern notion of photography takes ideas from paintings as well as from the hustling Daguerreotypist who had no idea about any aesthetic. It's all in the mix. But almost nobody has their portrait painted these days.

Today we do not really have the Daguerreotype. We have instead the consumer grade DSLR with a lousy, but cheap, kit lens. This camera has an Automatic mode that is fairly decent. Why, a woman can learn to take photographs in a couple of days! We now see the rise of down-market part-time photographers, styled "fauxtographers" or "mom with a camera" by the some. These are people who have failed to master the difficult art of professional photography. They are hacks selling a cheap service and providing results that simply are not very good. The results are often very bad, by contemporary standards. Standards set, largely, by the professional photographers.

Why look, she's not even using off camera flash! The white balance is awful! The megapixels, there are so few! The composition is.. I don't even know what that is!

All the criticisms are perfectly correct. The painters correctly observed, albeit at excessive length, that the Daguerreotype is not a painting. The irritated professional observes today that the Mom With A Camera is not making professional-looking baby pictures. This is, the attentive reader will know by now, true but irrelevant.

What the down-market photographer does provide is a service the customer cannot provide themselves, at a cheap price. The service is good enough to meet needs of the customer. Every crime and fault that is laid at the feet of the "fauxtographer" was laid, 150 years ago, at the feet of the roving Daguerreotypist. If the same arc occurs over the next 10 or 20 years, and I see no reason to imagine otherwise, a new standard for professional photography will arise. People will look at your carefully posed photograph, with big softbox at 45 degrees camera left and a reflector at 50 degrees camera right, the eyes lovingly sharpened ever so slightly in post and the skin smoothed to perfection, and they will say "That looks OLD, dude. What IS that?" and they will be right.

I don't know what a new aesthetic of event photography will look like, but I bet it will draw ideas from the current professional looks, as well as from the on-camera-flash, spray-and-pray spontaneous look. It will be a melding of Facebook snap with professionally smoothed skin, and a bunch of things we can't predict.

If you're a pro at the end of your career, don't worry about it. If you're just coming up, stay sharp. Those damned MWACs are going to win, in some sense, and you better be ready for it.

 

[pgriz]

As long as the suppliers are fixated on the product or service, they will always have end-runs around them by customers who are buying a benefit. The Daguerrotype was giving people images that they recognized, the day after they posed. The painters were creating images that conveyed an aspect of the person, after several sittings, and perhaps several months. Painters were selling prestige. Buyers were buying a quick, recognizable portrait. Nowadays, the very same dynamic is playing itself out because the suppliers are fixated on the process to deliver the product, whereas the buyers may have other ideas in mind. It comes back to what was discussed in another thread - the seller must understand the motivation of the buyer, and deliver a service/product that costs no more than what the buyer is willing to pay. That cost/benefit combination defines a niche in the market, and some are well equipped to exploit it, and some are completely incapable.

To me, the issue for success of any business person, is how well does one understand the niche that they are working in. If the fit is good, then the business person will make money and deliver to the customer what they expect, for the price they are willing to pay.

 

[cgipson1]

Those damned MWACs are going to win, in some sense, and you better be ready for it.

Only because of mass exposure of bad photos on social media, that is becoming the new "accepted" norm by the morons willing to pay for it! (Not to mention the low prices they charge for shoddy work, resetting values even for good work!). It won't be an improvement... more like a major downgrade!

 

[rexbobcat]

The difference though, is that the consumer CAN produce the same results that fauxtographers can, which cannot really be said for daguerreotypists.

But since we live in a society now that believes that people with titles are more competent than people without, they buy the service anyways.

And hence Sunshiny Shutters Photography is born.

 

[cgipson1]

The difference though, is that the consumer CAN produce the same results that fauxtographers can, which cannot really be said for daguerreotypists.

But since we live in a society now that believes that people with titles are more competent than people without, they buy the service anyways.

And hence Sunshiny Shutters Photography is born.

Excellent point, Rex! You are totally correct.. Auto mode for a consumer is the same as Auto mode for the MWAC Pro's!

 

[Overread]

I don't think its going to be quite like that. You're trying to link two different situations and concepts together and then saying that because both appear similar in some ways that things will turn out the same way in the end. pgriz has already outlined some of the big differences between a portrait painter and a photographer.

This isn't a clash of two different mediums competing for different markets - this is the same medium and the same exact product spread over different markets. I don't think that will result in the removal and loss of the market for the quality product in the least - it might mean that that market has to upscale its pricing to meet demands or even downscale its pricing.

Lets also not forget that many of the beginner businesses fold very quickly after they are formed because they charge too little to cover their expenses and are mostly just pocket money earners given the status of a "job" by way of the ease and cheapness of applying a watermark to a photo and getting a website. I suspect that as the economy recovers and jobs become available the widespread number of startup photographers will reduce. At the moment a great part of it is simply a reaction to the fact that many people are finding it very hard to get a job - in that kind of environment more people are willing to throw caution to the wind and start their own company - we've also a shift with social factors as well as more mothers get into employment, but possibly not wanting the same strict time requirements of a day to day job (essentially a new market of workers who need more flexible time so that they can build it around house/children as well).

 

[amolitor]

The difference though, is that the consumer CAN produce the same results that fauxtographers can, which cannot really be said for daguerreotypists.

But they actually can't, at the very least, they need someone else to hold the camera.

 

[amolitor]

Those damned MWACs are going to win, in some sense, and you better be ready for it.

Only because of mass exposure of bad photos on social media, that is becoming the new "accepted" norm by the morons willing to pay for it! (Not to mention the low prices they charge for shoddy work, resetting values even for good work!). It won't be an improvement... more like a major downgrade!

[ Edited for immaturity ]

 

[amolitor]

This isn't a clash of two different mediums competing for different markets - this is the same medium and the same exact product spread over different markets. I don't think that will result in the removal and loss of the market for the quality product in the least - it might mean that that market has to upscale its pricing to meet demands or even downscale its pricing.

I think this is a quibble -- is it the same but different, or different but the same? Sure, everyone's using cameras in this case, but the result looks quite different. If you like, I will certainly concede that it's the same medium, and the same product, in different markets. It doesn't matter to the central point.

pgriz did a nice job of putting my remarks into the terms of a market analysis, and they're equally true in those terms. The MWACs are delivering a product that the customer likes well enough for the money, same as the tintype guys. It's sure not Anne Geddes, but it's definitely a picture of my baby, and it's better than the ones I take, and Sue's Baby Boudoir went out and got me a nice 8x10 print of it and stuck it in a frame, and it was $200, and I had fun, and I have a CD of photos for my facebook too. YAY!

Sure, not all the mom based baby photographers will succeed. Most will fail.

None of this changes the fact that there's downward pressure in the market. If you can't figure out how to deliver YOUR baby photo sessions for $200 (or whatever) you better go up-market and start scrambling for the decreasing share available up there, or you better figure out how to do something else for a living. This has nothing to do with the superior product you deliver, or your skill, or anything. It doesn't mean you're stupid or that you suck. This is the simple march of technology and the normal workings of the market. The portrait painters and the buggy-whip makers were lovely skilled people, doing excellent work in their day, and it sucks that their livelihood went poof.

 

[Overread]

The downward pressure however isn't sustainable for a working photographer. As I said the market for the amateur "pro" is big because you've got large unemployment. Only whilst that remains will you have a regular supply of unemployed "fauxographers" willing to jump into the gap. Once you reduce that potential pool of people you'll fast find that all those small time companies close up and you won't get people rushing to fill the gap. The product price will increase yet again for the regular small time photographer company.

Of course this is ignoring the effects of big time companies who might well push into the market, using mass marketing and mass sales to generate a low price product with a high turnover of cheap workers. However I would argue that whilst their product is generally fairly cheap and cheerful they do tend to set a standard way above the bad "fauxographer".

In addition you're ignoring the facts regarding time; as said painters were delivering a totally different product in a totally different timescale. You really can't compare the rise of photography to the "rise of the fauxographer".


Now at the big company level (ergo your journalists and stock photographers) there is a massive downward trend there; but its totally unsustainable. Even the big stock market company bosses admit that its basically just a ticking time bomb before that market collapses in on itself because it simply can't sustain itself having driven its own product down so far in price that its almost worthless to the point where photographers are nearly if not actually paying more than they get out of stock (if you factor in their costs to get each shot).

 

[cgipson1]

Those damned MWACs are going to win, in some sense, and you better be ready for it.

Only because of mass exposure of bad photos on social media, that is becoming the new "accepted" norm by the morons willing to pay for it! (Not to mention the low prices they charge for shoddy work, resetting values even for good work!). It won't be an improvement... more like a major downgrade!

Are you a painter, by any chance? You sound just like a painter...

Is that your way of intimating that I am a dinosaur that is resisting change, in a feeble attempt to prove the point in your first post? You are being a little obvious, if that is the case!

 

[amolitor]

The downward pressure however isn't sustainable for a working photographer. As I said the market for the amateur "pro" is big because you've got large unemployment. Only whilst that remains will you have a regular supply of unemployed "fauxographers" willing to jump into the gap. Once you reduce that potential pool of people you'll fast find that all those small time companies close up and you won't get people rushing to fill the gap. The product price will increase yet again for the regular small time photographer company.

My experience in other industries with very low cost of entry is that the supply of hopeful lowballers is actually infinite. You might well be right, but I disagree with your prognosis at this time.

In addition you're ignoring the facts regarding time; as said painters were delivering a totally different product in a totally different timescale. You really can't compare the rise of photography to the "rise of the fauxographer".

I can see where you might have gotten the idea that this is what I was trying to do, but it's not quite right. What I mean to do is compare the fauxtographer to the Daguerreotypist, specifically. The Daguerreotypist was the vanguard of a larger thing -- photography -- that most definitely was not just the Daguerreotypists. In the same way, I think it likely that the fauxtographer is, or at any rate might be, the vanguard of a style of photography which is likely to obliterate several kinds of professional photography as we understand them. In fact, I think it is well understood that this is ongoing right now, my intent is to supply some historical context, and to speculate on what, for instance, wedding photography might look like in 20 years.

No, it's not going to be out of focus pictures of the bride with a poorly shopped on "frame" of cartoon puppies. But I think that whatever it is will be able to trace its roots to both that picture, and the pictures the pros produce today. And it'll be made lot more cheaply than the pros of today are asking.

 

[amolitor]

Is that your way of intimating that I am a dinosaur that is resisting change, in a feeble attempt to prove the point in your first post? You are being a little obvious, if that is the case!

[ Edited for immaturity ]

 

[cgipson1]

Is that your way of intimating that I am a dinosaur that is resisting change, in a feeble attempt to prove the point in your first post? You are being a little obvious, if that is the case!

Sorry I even replied, charlie. All you ever do is snipe, and I should have just let it go. So, this is me, letting it go - think what you will.

Thats OK.. all you ever do is spout opinions with little fact behind them... and I should have just let it go. So, this is me, letting it go - think what you will!

 

[Overread]

Ok give it a rest you two - take it to private messages if you've anything further to say to each other - otherwise move along back to the topic at hand.