The Re-Inventon of a Dead Horse

[The_Traveler]

None of this means that people today are crappier than they were last year. Quite the contrary. Moving to higher levels of abstraction lets us focus on what's important. Certain minutiae may be an important part of how you and your friends relate to the work, but it's not how other people do. And that is OK. Not everyone has to use film to take a good picture, although for some people it is without question important.

This in no way precludes the possibility that another person cannot make superb work with a digital camera in Auto mode.

I agree with this entirely as it pretty well sums up my spoken and unspoken thoughts.
If you use 'controls', you need to understand them; if you don't use them - and can still produce what art you want - good for you.

 

[rexbobcat]

Why the Hell are you guys so damned concerned with what other people are doing?

Because I have to deal with them on a daily basis and I can only take so many uninformed opinions before I want to crawl back into my shell and put on my crotchety old man mask.

Like the other day I had to photograph this girl for a college publication, and when I said I used to work for the paper she said "Oh, I love editorial photography! It's so EASY and fun!"

*****, don't ever speak words to me with your mouth hole again. (I didn't really say this but I sure took those photos quickly and sent her on her way, probably back to Candyland.)

 

[robbins.photo]

Technique has always been vanishing.

These days we have a certain attitude that if you don't understand the Holy Exposure Triangle, and perhaps how to use flash, or something of photoshop, or whatever, you're not serious. You're not connected to the work, you're just a dilettante. The technique that, somehow, informs the work and makes it better is lost on you.

150 years ago the same kinds of attitudes existed. They didn't care much about the exposure triangle, though. The techniques that connected you to the work, that made you not a dilettante, were things like the skill of flowing collodion across a glass plate. Exposure was, well, give it a minute or two, it'll be OK.

Computers followed much the same trend. If you didn't understand tubes and transistors, then you really wern't much of a computer person. How can you program the thing if you don't know how a half-adder works?! Later, you didn't really need to know about transistors, but f you didn't understand assembly language then you didn't understand how computers work. Then people stopped worrying so much about that, C programming was really the right level of abstraction to understand computers. These days it's about frameworks more than languages.

None of this means that people today are crappier than they were last year. Quite the contrary. Moving to higher levels of abstraction lets us focus on what's important. Certain minutiae may be an important part of how you and your friends relate to the work, but it's not how other people do. And that is OK. Not everyone has to use film to take a good picture, although for some people it is without question important.

I know a guy who didn't really find his voice until he started doing wet plate. The minutiae of that process are somehow important to how he makes a picture, even though, ultimately, the work is still about putting the camera in a good place, and pressing the shutter button at the right time.

This in no way precludes the possibility that another person cannot make superb work with a digital camera in Auto mode.

You can look at it from a completely different perspective. We are loosing our battle for control with progress, and "How" is exactly what is at stake.

500 years ago people knew pretty well how things worked. You would not need to be a professional in the field to explain how a carrieage moves or how a sand watch shows time.
These days we understand increasingly less about things that surround us, and only professionals can explain coherently how a hadron collider, Tianhe -1A or even an iPhone work.
In the not so distant future new more clever machines will be engineered, construsted and built by lesser machines. And nobody, including the professionals in the filed will be able to explain how exactly these machines work because it will not be a human design. Probably the moment when humans will not be able to answer the "How?" question any more, will be a turning point for our civilization, and it all will go down the slope.
Probably that is why a kid wants to open a box to look what is inside and how it works. It is the basic survival instinct. :shock:

So humanity will eventually meet it's demise at the hands of machines built by machines.

HA! Ridiculous. Everybody knows that the zombies will get us long before that happens.. sheesh..

But I do actually disagree with you on one point, I think our civilization hit it's downfall point already. The moment Barney the Dinosaur sued the San Diego Chicken, it was all over right then and there.

 

[slackercruster]

Good rundown OP. I'll tell you what I hate that was reinvented. Fuji screwed around with their aperture rings and that focus by wire if garbage.

 

[slackercruster]

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, don't think so. There is no shortage of perfect...perfectly boring pix all around.

 

[slackercruster]

Why the Hell are you guys so damned concerned with what other people are doing?

Photogs are always looking at what others are doing.

 

[pgriz]

Why the Hell are you guys so damned concerned with what other people are doing?

It's a human thing. Fishermen in boats are checking out what the other fishermen in other boats are doing. Mothers at preschool are checking out what the other mothers are doing. Guys in cubicles are always looking over the partitions to see what the other people are doing. There are some iconoclasts who claim not to care. The rest keep on looking just to make sure they're not missing out on something interesting.

 

[The_Traveler]

Steve5D should ask himself exactly that question.

 

[Steve5D]

Why the Hell are you guys so damned concerned with what other people are doing?

Why are you so interested in why we're so interested in what other people are doing?

Well, when someone's as interesting as you, it's difficult not to be...

 

[amolitor]

Why the Hell are you guys so damned concerned with what other people are doing?

Why are you so interested in why we're so interested in what other people are doing?

Well, when someone's as interesting as you, it's difficult not to be...

I have no way to rebut this statement, it is SO OBVIOUSLY TRUE! I bow to your unassailable logic, and superior intellect!

 

[Steve5D]

I bow to your unassailable logic, and superior intellect!

You're not the first, and it's unlikely you'll be the last...

:mrgreen:

 

[robbins.photo]

I bow to your unassailable logic, and superior intellect!

You're not the first, and it's unlikely you'll be the last...

:mrgreen:

Careful Steve, keep this up and you might wind up on the Group W bench with me and Derrel - lol. Well, I guess I am fixing ham and turkey for Christmas so we should have plenty.