The Re-Inventon of a Dead Horse

[robbins.photo]

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..

I still have a couple of slide rules somewhere. I couldn't use one now if I had to because I was quick to embrace electronic calculators The first engineering company I worked at had some old mechanical rotary calculators that would do simple math but the user had to figure out where the decimal point went. Better than a slide rule but not by much.

I think it goes a bit deeper though. Most of the old(er) guys here will remember taking things apart when they were a kid just to see what made them "Tick" (I still have parts of a Micky Mouse watch I took apart when I was 6). Vacuum cleaners, clocks, anything mechanical was fair game if I could find a screwdriver and pliers.

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think that kids don't do that now. Want to know how a vacuum cleaner works? Google it and use the knowledge that someone else gained. Want to see the insides of a watch? It's on the internet somewhere and you won't wreck a watch looking at it. My point being that there is no urge to obtain knowledge for one's self any longer. There is no urge to "Tinker" with things and see how they work and how to make them better. Everything is "Canned" and already there for the reading. They don't understand that wrecking the watch to see what made it work was the fun part.

Well I hope you'll forgive me and understand that this isn't an emotionally driven response but I'd have to say that's an over generalization. I have a nephew that absolutely cannot resist tearing apart anything that has moving parts. He constructed his first racing lawnmower just last year. He is keenly interested in how things work and what makes things tick. I don't think that's generational, I think it's more personal. Me I'm more interested in getting things to work - so if I can google it and figure out a quick fix, yes, admittedly I will.

 

[SCraig]

Well I hope you'll forgive me and understand that this isn't an emotionally driven response but I'd have to say that's an over generalization. I have a nephew that absolutely cannot resist tearing apart anything that has moving parts. He constructed his first racing lawnmower just last year. He is keenly interested in how things work and what makes things tick. I don't think that's generational, I think it's more personal. Me I'm more interested in getting things to work - so if I can google it and figure out a quick fix, yes, admittedly I will.

Maybe it is an over-generalization on my part. That's why I included the phrase "Maybe I'm wrong". I do agree that it is personal as opposed to generational, however I still feel that there are FEWER people with that inclination today than there were a few decades ago.

 

[robbins.photo]

Well I hope you'll forgive me and understand that this isn't an emotionally driven response but I'd have to say that's an over generalization. I have a nephew that absolutely cannot resist tearing apart anything that has moving parts. He constructed his first racing lawnmower just last year. He is keenly interested in how things work and what makes things tick. I don't think that's generational, I think it's more personal. Me I'm more interested in getting things to work - so if I can google it and figure out a quick fix, yes, admittedly I will.

Maybe it is an over-generalization on my part. That's why I included the phrase "Maybe I'm wrong". I do agree that it is personal as opposed to generational, however I still feel that there are FEWER people with that inclination today than there were a few decades ago.

Well certainly it's on the decline, of course back in my dad and grandfathers day you didn't just throw stuff away and replace it, because it was cheaper to repair it in most cases. Now in most cases that isn't true - for example, I can do a cetain level of repairs on LCD TV's, I do have the knowledge to make a lot of repairs to the TV's themselves. However, there is no money to be made in it - by the time I pay for the parts and figure out the amount of time I spend working on the TV even if I charge a ridiculously low amount for the labor, as in I'd probably make more with my time picking up a part time gig at McDonalds, well it's actually cheaper for the person to buy a new TV with a warranty than it is for me to repair the old one in most cases.

Same is true for a lot of laptops - unless the repair is something very simple and straightfoward by the time you pay for the part and tally up the time it takes you to fix it, well odds are good a new laptop would cost you about the same or in many cases less than the repairs cost.

So I don't think your completely off base here by any means, but I don't think it's so much a function of attitude but rather one of practicality.

 

[The_Traveler]

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.

Technically correct is really important for documentation but what has it got to do with art?

 

[amolitor]

Most people who bemoan the loss of technical knowledge in photography are, it turns out, not very proficient at wet-plate themselves. This isn't because they are bad people, it's because the number of people who are good at wet-plate is very small.

 

[rexbobcat]

I think disregarding technicalities is dangerous. I recently got into it with a local photographer who's just, well, to put it bluntly, a dime-a-dozen family photographer. She places people in the shade in public parks.

Where I live, photographers are coddled by their peers so much it's depressing. There is almost no improvement from what I can tell, because nobody is willing to give meaningful critique, and when they do the photographer gets all defensive. That's what this woman did. A particular photo was of a family shot mid-day under a tree in a park. The entire background was overexposed and the subjects took up 30% of the photo. It was a bad combination. She was called out on it and she fell back on the "it's just my style" and "it's a representation of my art" arguments. Saying that photography and art should be about the moment more than the technicalities or vice versa is a dangerous assertion.

 

[The_Traveler]

For most people I have met in photography, the absolute acme of the photographic art is the technique that they currently use and any change from that is a sign of degradation in societal norms and perhaps even a hint that the world will soon break apart and spin into the sun.

 

[Derrel]

I think disregarding technicalities is dangerous. I recently got into it with a local photographer who's just, well, to put it bluntly, a dime-a-dozen family photographer. She places people in the shade in public parks.

Where I live, photographers are coddled by their peers so much it's depressing. There is almost no improvement from what I can tell, because nobody is willing to give meaningful critique, and when they do the photographer gets all defensive. That's what this woman did. A particular photo was of a family shot mid-day under a tree in a park. The entire background was overexposed and the subjects took up 30% of the photo. It was a bad combination. She was called out on it and she fell back on the "it's just my style" and "it's a representation of my art" arguments. Saying that photography and art should be about the moment more than the technicalities or vice versa is a dangerous assertion.

See also: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/photographic-discussions/344008-buy-stove-open-rest

 

[robbins.photo]

I think disregarding technicalities is dangerous. I recently got into it with a local photographer who's just, well, to put it bluntly, a dime-a-dozen family photographer. She places people in the shade in public parks.

Where I live, photographers are coddled by their peers so much it's depressing. There is almost no improvement from what I can tell, because nobody is willing to give meaningful critique, and when they do the photographer gets all defensive. That's what this woman did. A particular photo was of a family shot mid-day under a tree in a park. The entire background was overexposed and the subjects took up 30% of the photo. It was a bad combination. She was called out on it and she fell back on the "it's just my style" and "it's a representation of my art" arguments. Saying that photography and art should be about the moment more than the technicalities or vice versa is a dangerous assertion.

Weird, isn't it? Sometimes you try to get people to think outside the box a little bit and maybe look at their own work through a slightly different prism - and sometimes it just doesn't turn out all that well. I mean granted sometimes it's the approach or the wording or whatever, but I guess in the end the result is normally not what you intend at all.

 

[amolitor]

There are technicalities, and then there are technicalities.

There are indeed technical details involved in: Put the camera somewhere good, point it somewhere good, mash the shutter button.

These include things like 'place the family someplace other than under a tree'. I think that the technicalities that haven't got much to do with the fundamental three step process are dinosaurs, shortly to be consigned justly to history for most people. I don't see any around, however, any of the three fundamental steps outlined above. I do see ways they can be partially pushed into post, but ultimately, you gotta do 'em, or you don't get good pictures.

 

[Derrel]

For most people I have met in photography, the absolute acme of the photographic art is the technique that they currently use and any change from that is a sign of degradation in societal norms and perhaps even a hint that the world will soon break apart and spin into the sun.

I figure that is why you so loudly and repeatedly "slam" the entire Instagram aesthetic...you just cannot accept the idea of Instagram photos being valid forms of photographic expression. I've read your blog posts condemning Hipstagram or Instagram filters and seen your devaluations of that here on TPF...you represent the "Ansel Adams" and the f.64 Group approach that slandered William Mortensen and the pictorialists so maliciously and mercilessly, condemning both their work and their methods sight-unseen, in one fell swoop. You know, almost exactly the way you, personally, rip on the Instagram aesthetic and demean both it and its practitioners, AND the value of the work they create...as if shooting for Instagram distribution will cause the Earth to break apart and spin into the sun...

So I would say that you are like most people in photography.Lew Lorton Photography | My opinions about Photographing the Homeless and Using Hipstagram-like Filters; negative

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As you wrote there, "Perhaps that is why I have such strongly held beliefs about photography and the spirit in which it should be done. Combine that with a personal defensiveness and irritability when people take me for a fool and what results is the cranky judgmental person that I am."


You are , in effect, taking the f.64 Group, the Ansel Adams-like stance that states that THEY are the sole arbiters of artistic validity, of photographic expression,and that THEIR OWN personal,favored ways of making photographs are the holy grail. You equate using entire approaches, sight-unseen, as "negative". So yeah, you've proved your point pretty tellingly.

50 Watts

 

[minicoop1985]

I'm not taking sides-I have respect for both Lew and Derrel's opinions-but I had to like that post for one reason and one reason alone (aside from the whole well reasoned argument thing)...

shooting for Instagram distribution will cause the Earth to break apart and spin into the sun...

This made me laugh WAY too much.

 

[robbins.photo]

For most people I have met in photography, the absolute acme of the photographic art is the technique that they currently use and any change from that is a sign of degradation in societal norms and perhaps even a hint that the world will soon break apart and spin into the sun.

I figure that is why you so loudly and repeatedly "slam" the entire Instagram aesthetic...you just cannot accept the idea of Instagram photos being valid forms of photographic expression. I've read your blog posts condemning Hipstagram or Instagram filters and seen your devaluations of that here on TPF...you represent the "Ansel Adams" and the f.64 Group approach that slandered William Mortensen and the pictorialists so maliciously and mercilessly, condemning both their work and their methods sight-unseen, in one fell swoop. You know, almost exactly the way you, personally, rip on the Instagram aesthetic and demean both it and its practitioners, AND the value of the work they create...as if shooting for Instagram distribution will cause the Earth to break apart and spin into the sun...

So I would say that you are like most people in photography.Lew Lorton Photography | My opinions about Photographing the Homeless and Using Hipstagram-like Filters; negative

[TABLE="class: splitter blog-vertical, width: 944"]
[TR]
[TD="class: splitter-left-wide vertical-top"]My opinions about Photographing the Homeless and Using Hipstagram-like Filters; negative
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

As you wrote there, "Perhaps that is why I have such strongly held beliefs about photography and the spirit in which it should be done. Combine that with a personal defensiveness and irritability when people take me for a fool and what results is the cranky judgmental person that I am."


You are , in effect, taking the f.64 Group, the Ansel Adams-like stance that states that THEY are the sole arbiters of artistic validity, of photographic expression,and that THEIR OWN personal,favored ways of making photographs are the holy grail. You equate using entire approaches, sight-unseen, as "negative". So yeah, you've proved your point pretty tellingly.

50 Watts

Wow.. Derrel. Dang. Looks like you may be joining me for Christmas Dinner over here on the Group W bench. Yikes.

 

[amolitor]

Now, now, that's not quite what Lew is saying.

He might recoil from instagram effects, but he admits that -- in theory at least -- there's no reason an instagram filter cannot support or at any rate not interfere with a good picture. His beef is when you take a bad picture (let us table for the nonce what that might mean) and try to make it good with an instagram filter.

Mortenson got a raw deal, to be sure, but to be honest I don't think he was all that great He seems to have married the worst of Victorian sentimentality to a sort of comic book LOOKIT THAT! sensibility in the service of, you know, I don't even know what. If I could make out what his point was, I'd probably like the stuff better, but so much of it seems to simply be freaky for the sake of freaky. Arbus went down the same road. At least she could fall back on the crutch of "but at least my freaks are real", but she's still kinda problematic.

 

[robbins.photo]

Now, now, that's not quite what Lew is saying.

He might recoil from instagram effects, but he admits that -- in theory at least -- there's no reason an instagram filter cannot support or at any rate not interfere with a good picture. His beef is when you take a bad picture (let us table for the nonce what that might mean) and try to make it good with an instagram filter.

Rotfl.. so if Lew has a beef with taking an inferior picture, doing a quick and dirty edit to it like say, applying an instagram filter, then that's just fine and dandy and the birds are all on people's shoulders singing happy tunes.

Now if I try to make.. hmm.. pretty much the exact same point, albiet badly worded, about many of the bad pictures I see over on Flickr that are run through another filter to convert them from color to B&W - and that it doesn't take a bad image and make it a good one, what happens? Well then it's just fine and dandy, all hunky dorey that I get villified for it - up to and including having Lew, The self appointed gaurdian of such things, declare me a non-person.

Hmm...

Not really trying to open this can of worms again you understand, but the irony is just so amazingly over the top - ok well actually I think maybe irony should be replaced with another word, probably one starting with the letter H in this context.

Lol