The Re-Inventon of a Dead Horse

[sashbar]

I decided to start a new thread with this quote from Derrel, because the article he mentioned is worth reading and discussing, methinks.

... maybe you two can take heart6 from this interesting column Kirk Tuck wrote not too long ago, after having attended the PDN photo show in NYC recently.

The Graying Of Traditional Photography And Why Everything Is Getting Re-Invented In A Form We Don't Understand By Kirk Tuck | DIYPhotography.net

The most interesting part in this article to me personally is the question in the headline, which in fact was not answered: why everything is getting re-invented?

He wrote about the new generation: "It's no longer enough to get something in focus, well exposed and color correct. It's no longer good enough to fix all the "flaws" in Photoshop. What the important audience wants now is the narrative, the story, the "why" and not the "how." The love,not the schematic".

But Kirk Tuck does not say why the "why" became more important than "how". Some would say, because these days our cameras know "how", so we may concentrate on "why". I think there is more than that.

Funny enough only yesterday I wrote about an image here in TPF and mentioned exactly that: I did not care how it was shot, if it was a snapshot or a masterpiece, because more important to me was the story it gave me. And that is exactly how I feel about most images these days. Technical perfection does not wow me anymore. Why? Because the world is already over-saturated with technically perfect images. It is everywhere, every commercial, every poster you see, every postcard that falls through you letter hole is technically perfect. Every landscape that is worth a quick look was shot from dawn to dusk. Perfection is devalued. The beauty is devalued, we need to look further than a beautiful skin tone to appreciate the beauty. Not long ago a perfect photo would live a generation. These days it is disposable within a day. Only masterpieces that go far beyond beauty survive.

A technically perfect image of a perfectly beautiful woman is cheap as chips - they are everywhere you look: form travel brochures to dental floss commercials. Even porn is becoming increasingly glossy. So there is nothing more mundane, dull and boring to me, than a photo of a cat or a beautiful woman. (Probably a photo of a beautiful woman with a cat would beat that). Because every cat and every beautiful woman on Earth was already shot to perfection 147 times at the very least. If we extract all silver photobullets from cats and beautiful women, we can build a new shining Berlin Wall that will stretch to Jupiter. And back to Earth. Twice.

I am not able to appreciate technical Excellency anymore, even though I still remember my darkroom torture when a teenager and my crap photos from my Olympus film P&S of the late 80-s. I became more democratic. These days we pick up a free glossy magazine in a supermarket and expect perfectly constructed, exposed ( in more than one sense) and pp-ed images on every page, just as we expect our microwave to turn on when we press the button and our car engine start when we turn the key. Or press the button, if you have a modern car.

That is exactly why technical perfection does not wow the new generation. That is why I am not buying a Full Frame camera – I have a feeling that I would jump on a train that goes to the theatre with no spectators. And no show.

I would say that “perfection” should be replaced by the more important or decisive definition these days: an aesthetic threshold - an image quality that is good enough for people to appreciate photography. iPhone 5 has crossed this threshold lately and that is why big camera manufacturers are so worried.

Again, quote: "So, what does this mean for the camera industry? It means that incremental improvements in quality no longer mean **** to a huge and restless younger market. They don't care if the image is 99% perfect if the content is exhilarating and captivating. No one cared if the Hobbit was available at 48 fps as long as the story was strong in 24 fps. No one cares if a landscape is perfect if there's a reason for the image of a landscape to exist. No one cares if a model is perfect if the model is beguiling".

The big question is - is it all good or bad for photography?

I believe it is great. It liberates image making from technical shackles and exposes creatively limited and artistically hopeless photographers who major on technical prowess. It exposes them the way a good music exposes a drummer who learned how to hit his drum 20 times per second with precision, but is unable to follow the tune. It exposes gear geeks, camera snobs, bokeh experts and those jolly fellows who's main priority in photography is to get laid. (I would not be so sure about the last category, though. No, these guys will survive, god bless them)

Anyway, the new generation may be obnoxious about the true "quality" of an image, do not give a **** about bokeh (I applaud here), may never ever heard about Gestalt principles and have no idea who this Fibonacci bloke is, BUT there is one important thing the new generation gets absolutely right: creativeness and content are more important to them than form and technique. That means that a lot of creative talents will get nowhere because of their technical ineptitude, but there is a chance that new ideas will be brought into photography and we all will be rescued from the unenviable fate of beating a dead horse with a more and more sophisticated photo stick.

What are your thoughts, guys? And read the article, it gives you a lot of food for thought.

 

[pgriz]

The thing is, technical perfection is "easy". Genuine emotional engagement is hard. It's the same whether playing music, or making photographs, or painting.

Doing the technical stuff is easy because you can get it down to a formula, and buy the tools (hardware, software) to do it. You can teach it. You can set up the lights. You can HDR/stack it. It's you and the "thing".

Emotional engagement, on the other hand, is a much trickier thing to teach or create. Because now we have the viewer to think about. Heck, we got lots of potential viewers to think about. Now the image is a delivery vehicle for emotional triggers. And this part is the one that we're just not very good at. Sure, on a superficial level, everybody (well, almost everybody) responds to pictures of cute animals, especially with large eyes... And we do respond on a somewhat deeper level to images of human pain and suffering. But how many times can we say we see an image and are emotionally affected? I'd venture to say, rarely. And why is that?

 

[Steve5D]

What the important audience wants now is the narrative, the story, the "why" and not the "how." The love,not the schematic".

I don't know that I've ever had someone look at one of my images and be impressed (or not, as the case may be) with the technical merits of it it. No one has ever cared what my f-stop was, or what ISO I was shooting at. They simply care about the image, and they always have...

The big question is - is it all good or bad for photography?

Well, considering that "the image" is what matters in photography, I guess I think it's a good thing. But it is what it is, and it always has been...

That means that a lot of creative talents will get nowhere because of their technical ineptitude...

And yet, just the other day, someone posted a thread regarding a 3- year old in Africa who was having his first gallery showing. I'd go out on a limb and say that kid doesn't enjoy a high level of technical proficiency.

But, again, he doesn't have to...

 

[SCraig]

... He wrote about the new generation: "It's no longer enough to get something in focus, well exposed and color correct. It's no longer good enough to fix all the "flaws" in Photoshop. What the important audience wants now is the narrative, the story, the "why" and not the "how." The love,not the schematic".

But Kirk Tuck does not say why the "why" became more important than "how". Some would say, because these days our cameras know "how", so we may concentrate on "why". I think there is more than that.

I feel that it's because that is what the world wants these days. Years ago people wanted to know "How" or "Why" something worked the way that it did but today most people are only concerned with results. As long as it works who cares how it got there? This leaves them more time in the day to worry about moving money from one pile to another pile.

Knowledge used to be the ultimate incentive. People learned things because they wanted to, because their thirst to know how and why things worked the way that they do was insatiable. These days knowledge has taken a second (or third, or fourth) place to the almighty dollar. Nobody wants to work any more, they only want to get paid, and they are looking for any and all shortcuts that will allow them to obtain the maximum amount of money with the minimum amount of effort.

 

[amolitor]

I read Tuck's piece a while back, and honestly don't recall this particular theme in it. Not to say it's not there, obviously, but I am going to respond here not to Tuck, but to the thread!

To say that "why" has recently become more important than "how" is simply wrong. "Why" and "what" have always mattered more than "how". The obsession with method has always been with us, but serious people have never paid much attention to it.

 

[The_Traveler]

The first two posts here, by Sashbar and pgriz, really summarize both the reality, as I see it, and my personal convictions about the future.

Especially this

It liberates image making from technical shackles and exposes creatively limited and artistically hopeless photographers who major on technical prowess. It exposes gear geeks, camera snobs, bokeh experts and those jolly fellows who's main priority in photography is to get laid.

I like technical perfection and I love to sink into a well exposed high-MP image, but that's something else. It's personal and it has nothing at all with the creation of art.

 

[amolitor]

Having re-read Tuck's piece, I see now, better, what he's saying.

He's not saying that the technical details, the "how", have suddenly been moved aside in favor of "what" and "why". He's not claiming that up until now everyone's been mainly interested in technique, not content. He's simply saying that technical stuff is a done deal. Nobody cares about technical stuff any more, because to the extent that it matters, it's a given.

To expand on what he's saying, I think he means that the younger generation (and, frankly, anyone at all who's been paying attention) don't care about technique. If they want an uber-sharp ultimate DoF landscape, they just grab the right gear and do it, duh. What's the problem? Technique? Up yours, the technical stuff is now trivial: get the gear that does the thing, fuss with it a bit, sure you gotta learn a little this and that but it's just not hard. You just do it.

This is annoying as hell to gearheads, who spend a lot of time mastering technique. Some people still labor over the exposure triangle. If you read some posts on TPF, you'll get the impression that the Exposure Triangle is deep magic, and that a young acolyte should probably spend a year with a vow of silence, to master it. This is crap. a) who cares, the camera can do a decent job on exposure by itself and if it doesn't dial in some exposure compensation until chimping tells you it looks good. b) it's simply not very hard to figure out.

This extends to many other areas. Modern techniques like focus stacking and HDR are things "to be mastered" to some, and to others "if I need it I'll watch a couple tutorials, and I'll just friggin do it, jeez"

Content has always mattered to serious people. That is not in fact a change. What's changed is the relative importance of it. Since technical hoohaw is simply taken for granted, it's done, we needn't discuss it, then content becomes the only thing that matters.

This is a good thing. This is a step forward.

Photography has always moved in this direction. Wet plate. Dry plate. Film. Roll film. Digital cameras. Cell phone cameras. Really good cell phone cameras. Light-field cameras.

It's a progression from an utter mess of really quite complicated and dangerous chemistry to "press the damn button", but always with the underlying fundamental act of photography:

Put the camera in a good place, point it in the right direction, and make an exposure.

Have we reduced photography as a process entirely to that fundamental act? Not quite, but we're getting there. And that's a good thing.

 

[sashbar]

Knowledge used to be the ultimate incentive. People learned things because they wanted to, because their thirst to know how and why things worked the way that they do was insatiable. These days knowledge has taken a second (or third, or fourth) place to the almighty dollar. Nobody wants to work any more, they only want to get paid, and they are looking for any and all shortcuts that will allow them to obtain the maximum amount of money with the minimum amount of effort.

Scott, you reminded me of my old Uni teacher. She was The Queen of a Slide Rule and her nickname was Bloody Mary. She was a true Slide Rule virtuoso and we were hopeless. Her calculation speed was just jaw dropping, and we kept making mistakes all the time. Then one day suddenly ( literally within a week or so) everyone got a calculator. And the slide ruler was dead. She was devastated, because as a teacher, without a slide ruler, let's be honest, she was quite poor. She even tried to convince us that a slide ruler was good for our brain, unlike that stupid electronic calculator that makes no mistakes. Predictably, poor Blody Mary was left alone with her Knowledge. Probably she thought we were a lazy generation, always looking for shortcuts, trying to do things with the minimum of effort.. Unlike us she was not excited by the fact that a calculator works million times faster than any slide ruler and never ever makes mistakes. Probably she would say that a cube root of 267549, calculated on a ruler, would have a different smell and color and ultimately is more human..

 

[limr]

I'm not convinced that the 'why' is conscious. History is cyclical. The impressionists rejected realism and painted dots. Henri Breton and the surrealists of the early 20th century rejected the rigid structure of Victorian literature and created free-flowing narratives that had no resolution, but you could still emotionally connect to. Art, literature, fashion...when they get saturated with one thing for long enough, eventually people get frisky and start kicking back and so the pendulum swings. All the slick techno music or hair bands of the 80s got smashed the first time "Smells Like Teen Spirit" played on the radio.

So are people tired of the same old shtick and looking for something new? Yes. Why? Dunno - human nature? And in a sense - perhaps not in these particular details, but certainly in spirit - rejecting technical perfection in the search for emotional connection and creative content is only 'new to them' because they don't realize it's been done before. (Whoever 'they' are...).

 

[sashbar]

Having re-read Tuck's piece, I see now, better, what he's saying.

He's not saying that the technical details, the "how", have suddenly been moved aside in favor of "what" and "why". He's not claiming that up until now everyone's been mainly interested in technique, not content. He's simply saying that technical stuff is a done deal. Nobody cares about technical stuff any more, because to the extent that it matters, it's a given.

To expand on what he's saying, I think he means that the younger generation (and, frankly, anyone at all who's been paying attention) don't care about technique. If they want an uber-sharp ultimate DoF landscape, they just grab the right gear and do it, duh. What's the problem? Technique? Up yours, the technical stuff is now trivial: get the gear that does the thing, fuss with it a bit, sure you gotta learn a little this and that but it's just not hard. You just do it.

This is annoying as hell to gearheads, who spend a lot of time mastering technique. Some people still labor over the exposure triangle. If you read some posts on TPF, you'll get the impression that the Exposure Triangle is deep magic, and that a young acolyte should probably spend a year with a vow of silence, to master it. This is crap. a) who cares, the camera can do a decent job on exposure by itself and if it doesn't dial in some exposure compensation until chimping tells you it looks good. b) it's simply not very hard to figure out.

This extends to many other areas. Modern techniques like focus stacking and HDR are things "to be mastered" to some, and to others "if I need it I'll watch a couple tutorials, and I'll just friggin do it, jeez"

Content has always mattered to serious people. That is not in fact a change. What's changed is the relative importance of it. Since technical hoohaw is simply taken for granted, it's done, we needn't discuss it, then content becomes the only thing that matters.

This is a good thing. This is a step forward.

Photography has always moved in this direction. Wet plate. Dry plate. Film. Roll film. Digital cameras. Cell phone cameras. Really good cell phone cameras. Light-field cameras.

It's a progression from an utter mess of really quite complicated and dangerous chemistry to "press the damn button", but always with the underlying fundamental act of photography:

Put the camera in a good place, point it in the right direction, and make an exposure.

Have we reduced photography as a process entirely to that fundamental act? Not quite, but we're getting there. And that's a good thing.

Amolitor, I am afraid you have to re-read it again He is not talking about the technical stuff as such. He is saying that because the technical suff is a done deal, people are not interested in a perfect technical quality of an image anymore. They do not care if it is "tack sharp" or perfectly exposed - exactly because it is a done deal and can be done easily these days. Everyone can do it, and because of that it is everywhere and it has lost its value. So the content, the creative idea, the narrative, the story is becoming a king.

 

[amolitor]

Certainly to the extent that lo-fi is a thing, it's cyclical.

We have Robinson telling people that sharpness is important, that photography is essentially about sharpness and detail, and to not render as much detail as possible is a fundamental betrayal of the form (which is actually a pretty good argument). In 1869 or so.

We have Cameron making portraits starting around the same time, quite fuzzy ones, and beyond roundly denounced by Robinson and others, but not everyone.

Pictorialism moves on to a sort of impressionism, with gum bichromate smudginess abounding through the turn of the century. By 1920 or so we're back to 'it has to be all sharp all the time' which, surprisingly, kind of sticks with us for quite a while, at least here in the USA. The iron hand of Ansel Adams is probably a major culprit here.

Over the last 20 years or so lomography pops up, probably informed by the 20 years or photography before that when Adams grasp starts to loosen.

The war rages on, and I suppose it always will, and somewhere in there we get cycles of technique matters/doesn't, sharpness matters/doesn't, and so on. Now that anything you like is pretty much available at a button-press I don't think the war is going away, but at least people will be able to pick a side, or switch sides, with the press of a button.

 

[SnappingShark]

Are we going to end up with nobody in this world who is capable of shooting a technically correct shot, yet have thousands of instagram images portraying the moments of somebody's lives?

Is the skill, the artform dying out? We still NEED people to know the skills and the technical know-how. For that's how some people make a living: providing us with all the perfect images you see in magazines etc.

I wish this generation wanted to know the hows and the whys.

 

[amolitor]

Amolitor, I am afraid you have to re-read it again He is not talking about the technical stuff as such. He is saying that because the technical suff is a done deal, people are not interested in a perfect technical quality of an image anymore. They do not care if it is "tack sharp" or perfectly exposed - exactly because it is a done deal and can be done easily these days. Everyone can do it, and because of that it is everywhere and it has lost its value. So the content, the creative idea, the narrative, the story is becoming a king.

Fair point, and he's right. If technique is a done deal, then naturally people will care less about it. If gum bichromate, lomography, f/64, pictorialist, etc, approaches to rendering are all a button-press away, then we're less invested in which one you choose. Now you choose whatever suits your mood or the work, because you can, and because you don't care all that much. Or at any rate the option is available. There will always be people who will superglue their photoshop settings to "gum bichromate rendering only as God intended" but whatever. That too is an option.

Another side remark he makes is that since we're all digital all the time, anything over a couple thousand pixels on an edge is a waste of time, in the final product. Which is true, to some extent. I think photography is bifurcating into two quite different media, in fact, one of which is purely digital and one of which is print. The print side is much smaller, and may not even survive in the long term, but it's fundamentally different in important ways.

 

[limr]

Are we going to end up with nobody in this world who is capable of shooting a technically correct shot, yet have thousands of instagram images portraying the moments of somebody's lives?

Is the skill, the artform dying out? We still NEED people to know the skills and the technical know-how. For that's how some people make a living: providing us with all the perfect images you see in magazines etc.

I wish this generation wanted to know the hows and the whys.

No, there will always be people interested in the how and why. But the fact that the vast majority of people don't want to know is nothing new. Most people most of the time don't want to know. Some even revel in their not knowing. For them, Kodak made box cameras and roll film more than a hundred years ago. For them, paperback pulp fiction is written and sold in drugstores. For them, we now have cell phone cameras. Most people will always be more interested in consuming rather than creating.

But there were people who took the simple tools and went beyond point and shoot and learned how to create more with them. And they also learned how to use more complicated tools, and they continued to create. Just as the consumers won't go away, neither will the creators.

 

[robbins.photo]

I decided to start a new thread with this quote from Derrel, because the article he mentioned is worth reading and discussing, methinks.

... maybe you two can take heart6 from this interesting column Kirk Tuck wrote not too long ago, after having attended the PDN photo show in NYC recently.

The Graying Of Traditional Photography And Why Everything Is Getting Re-Invented In A Form We Don't Understand By Kirk Tuck | DIYPhotography.net

The most interesting part in this article to me personally is the question in the headline, which in fact was not answered: why everything is getting re-invented?

He wrote about the new generation: "It's no longer enough to get something in focus, well exposed and color correct. It's no longer good enough to fix all the "flaws" in Photoshop. What the important audience wants now is the narrative, the story, the "why" and not the "how." The love,not the schematic".

But Kirk Tuck does not say why the "why" became more important than "how". Some would say, because these days our cameras know "how", so we may concentrate on "why". I think there is more than that.

Funny enough only yesterday I wrote about an image here in TPF and mentioned exactly that: I did not care how it was shot, if it was a snapshot or a masterpiece, because more important to me was the story it gave me. And that is exactly how I feel about most images these days. Technical perfection does not wow me anymore. Why? Because the world is already over-saturated with technically perfect images. It is everywhere, every commercial, every poster you see, every postcard that falls through you letter hole is technically perfect. Every landscape that is worth a quick look was shot from dawn to dusk. Perfection is devalued. The beauty is devalued, we need to look further than a beautiful skin tone to appreciate the beauty. Not long ago a perfect photo would live a generation. These days it is disposable within a day. Only masterpieces that go far beyond beauty survive.

A technically perfect image of a perfectly beautiful woman is cheap as chips - they are everywhere you look: form travel brochures to dental floss commercials. Even porn is becoming increasingly glossy. So there is nothing more mundane, dull and boring to me, than a photo of a cat or a beautiful woman. (Probably a photo of a beautiful woman with a cat would beat that). Because every cat and every beautiful woman on Earth was already shot to perfection 147 times at the very least. If we extract all silver photobullets from cats and beautiful women, we can build a new shining Berlin Wall that will stretch to Jupiter. And back to Earth. Twice.

I am not able to appreciate technical Excellency anymore, even though I still remember my darkroom torture when a teenager and my crap photos from my Olympus film P&S of the late 80-s. I became more democratic. These days we pick up a free glossy magazine in a supermarket and expect perfectly constructed, exposed ( in more than one sense) and pp-ed images on every page, just as we expect our microwave to turn on when we press the button and our car engine start when we turn the key. Or press the button, if you have a modern car.

That is exactly why technical perfection does not wow the new generation. That is why I am not buying a Full Frame camera – I have a feeling that I would jump on a train that goes to the theatre with no spectators. And no show.

I would say that “perfection” should be replaced by the more important or decisive definition these days: an aesthetic threshold - an image quality that is good enough for people to appreciate photography. iPhone 5 has crossed this threshold lately and that is why big camera manufacturers are so worried.

Again, quote: "So, what does this mean for the camera industry? It means that incremental improvements in quality no longer mean **** to a huge and restless younger market. They don't care if the image is 99% perfect if the content is exhilarating and captivating. No one cared if the Hobbit was available at 48 fps as long as the story was strong in 24 fps. No one cares if a landscape is perfect if there's a reason for the image of a landscape to exist. No one cares if a model is perfect if the model is beguiling".

The big question is - is it all good or bad for photography?

I believe it is great. It liberates image making from technical shackles and exposes creatively limited and artistically hopeless photographers who major on technical prowess. It exposes them the way a good music exposes a drummer who learned how to hit his drum 20 times per second with precision, but is unable to follow the tune. It exposes gear geeks, camera snobs, bokeh experts and those jolly fellows who's main priority in photography is to get laid. (I would not be so sure about the last category, though. No, these guys will survive, god bless them)

Anyway, the new generation may be obnoxious about the true "quality" of an image, do not give a **** about bokeh (I applaud here), may never ever heard about Gestalt principles and have no idea who this Fibonacci bloke is, BUT there is one important thing the new generation gets absolutely right: creativeness and content are more important to them than form and technique. That means that a lot of creative talents will get nowhere because of their technical ineptitude, but there is a chance that new ideas will be brought into photography and we all will be solved from the unenviable fate of beating a dead horse with more and more perfect photo gear.

What are your thoughts, guys? And read the article, it gives you a lot of food for thought.

I guess I have the same problem with this as I have with most articles and opinion pieces that try to talk about the "new generation" or "next generation" - they all make the same assumptions and they all ridiculously assume that everyone from the next generation thinks/acts/behaves the same way, and will still have the exact same mindsets and attitudes 20 years from now. This is just not the case, it never has been and it never will be. I was also struck by one other thought, a recent experience I had when cleaning out the garage with some help from my eldest daughter.

My own daughters are growing up in a world in which they had no exposure to 8 track tapes. Even my eldest (who is now in her 20's) had no idea what an 8 track was until we stumbled across one cleaning out the garage and I gave her a demo. She laughed - she simply couldn't believe that music once came out on a tape cartridge that was far larger than any MP3 player she had ever owned, and the notion of having to pull the tape out and flip it over in the middle of a song was completely ludicrious to her.

The music makers of her generation will never have to contend with such techincial issues when delivering their product to the consumer. But here's what hit me recently - you know what, even with all of that Justin Bieber music still sucks.

The "Bieb" never had to deal with out of date, poor quality recording methods - no pop and hiss of the vinyl - he has all the electronic reverb and doodads to jazz up his voice. Every electronic gizmo in the world. Kid still couldn't hold a candle to the greats - Billie Holiday, just to name one. Technical sophistication is great - it makes things easier to do, corrects for a lot of mistakes. But in the end talent is just talent, and all the technical sophistication in the world simply can't be used to replace it.