Umberto Eco "An epidemic of electronic eye"

[nightfly]

Everyone else is always taking photos for the wrong reasons while we "photographers" have pure hearts and minds.

I think there is a point here and one that I largely agree with but I do think it's hard to know what motivates others or to judge their motives from afar.

Personally, I find that on vacation I often take photos because I "should" or my wife wants me to while at home I prowl around alone looking for photos. On a good day walking with my camera looking for photos produces a heightened sense of engagement with the world however when I'm away photography functions more as an interruption of the experience.

I think taking pictures performs different functions for different people at different times from wanting to capture a moment, to wanting to enhance ones social stature by having been somewhere or seen someone to sharing a unique vision of a moment in time with others. Perhaps these are really all the same thing.

 

[semi-ambivalent]

Everyone else is always taking photos for the wrong reasons while we "photographers" have pure hearts and minds.

I think there is a point here and one that I largely agree with but I do think it's hard to know what motivates others or to judge their motives from afar.

Personally, I find that on vacation I often take photos because I "should" or my wife wants me to while at home I prowl around alone looking for photos. On a good day walking with my camera looking for photos produces a heightened sense of engagement with the world however when I'm away photography functions more as an interruption of the experience.

I think taking pictures performs different functions for different people at different times from wanting to capture a moment, to wanting to enhance ones social stature by having been somewhere or seen someone to sharing a unique vision of a moment in time with others. Perhaps these are really all the same thing.

My remark about being 'better' needed a sarcasm icon. I remind myself to resist thinking I or my images are somehow better or more important (to me) just because they came from my F or my M3. Phone cameras have many virtues and trying to see or, failing that, to set up a conflict between them and, say, Leica, is pointless and robs one of both energy and time.

My real concern is not importance but longevity. The vendors will all promise that the images you take will be there but they're ephemeral and can disappear in an instant. Plus, they're easy, but nothing establishes value like difficulty. That's why I have an M3 instead of an M9 although I can easily afford one; developing and printing film is labor and time intensive and makes for an effective crap-image filter. At least, one that works often enough that I keep using it. 🙂

 

[dreilly]

When people don't follow the etiquette the fault is not with the mechanical devices they use, the fault is with the people.

I once attended a photography lecture and a young man took non-stop photos of the speaker with a DSLR and the constant sound simply made everyone angry.

People are the problem, as always, not the technology.

I do not think this is entirely true. As any good designer knows, things can and do change human behavior. This is why Mennonites and Amish are so discerning with how they integrate technology. They consider the long term effects of the technology on the behavior of the people in their community. Phones interrupt family life and thus, if they are allowed at all, are often in a barn or on a telephone pole. Millions seem permanently wired into their smart phones, like they were an extension of their hands. This is not just how they chose to use the technology. The technology is meant to be absorbing, even addictive. It is not so one sided as what you say. Technology is designed with a specific behavior, and a set of implied values, in mind. People can ve educated or disciplined to apply the technology in a way contrary to the design, but most people cannot be blamed for using it as intended.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

I think there's a crucial distinction here. Great photography is about getting the viewer to notice fleeting moments we might otherwise have missed -- for instance, Eggleston's light bulb. It trains us to pay attention to the world around us. At its best, taking photographs is an extension of that discipline. It teaches us to be present.

Could you please define "great photography" as opposed to "good photography", "poor photography" or "any photograph I (dis)like"?

 

[Pickett Wilson]

"My real concern is not importance but longevity. The vendors will all promise that the images you take will be there but they're ephemeral and can disappear in an instant."

Longevity is a red herring, IMHO. I burned many thousands of negatives a few years back that should have been of at least regional historical value because they spanned 40 years of my photography in the region, because I literally could not give them away. There were a couple of Universities and many historical organizations that wanted the images, but they did not want the physical artifacts; the negatives and prints. Citing lack of storage space, cost of storage and ease of making them available to the public, they wanted scanned digital files of all that stuff...if I would pay the cost of scanning everything, of course.

The practical realities of archiving negatives, prints or even digital files don't enter into many discussions about longevity of images. But I ran into that reality in the real world.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

The practical realities of archiving negatives, prints or even digital files don't enter into many discussions about longevity of images.

A very good point. Very good indeed.

 

[ped]

This is a case in point here. Minor fender bender below our balcony. The Honda driver jumped out of the car and started taking pictures of the incident with her Iphone before she checked on the driver of the black Audi!!!!!! After a couple of minutes the woman in the Audi got out and started taking pictures with her phone. OK, nobody was hurt and the damage was limited.
You get the feeling that unless the pictures were taken - there was no accident!!!!!!!

Fair enough, though. Insurance companies will probably want to see pictures. I'd probably be using an R-D1 with a 28mm ultron, though. What an idiot.

 

[Paul T.]

I love how all of us act in a superior way, either looking down on that old fool Umberto, or on the masses and their dumb fascination with technology.

Have none of us been in either situation? Personally, I've given lectures where I got annoyed that people buried themselves in their laptop taking notes - I'm not entirely sure why.

I've also mindlessly video'd my son's musical performances to the extent I've even annoyed myself, and focused all my attention on whether the video was any good (it wasn't), rather than the performance.

Whichever extreme you agree with, or whether you're somewhere in the middle, we are looking at a huge change in human behaviour. There is a huge flow of information around us all, more than ever before. How much of it is meaningful we will only find out in the future.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

I think some of the angst is because of the inevitability of rapidly accelerating technology. Because technology is so successfully being driven by marketing, there is no real popular effort being made to understand its implications. Where it is easy to get people to, say, oppose building a toxic waste dump in their back yard, how much more difficult is convincing people that there may be a social and economic downside (such as technology taking jobs away from people or lowering their pay) to higher resolution and larger televisions? Or to smarter cameras?

Advances in technology have real consequences, not all positive. But the sense of inevitability that there is no stopping those advances eliminates any possibility that there could ever be a consensus to "just say no" to accelerating, technology driven change. Many jobs have been lost, replaced by technology, and many more will be lost; but marketing has convinced us that all the cool new, and cheaper, toys are worth the price.

 

[igi]

This is a case in point here. Minor fender bender below our balcony. The Honda driver jumped out of the car and started taking pictures of the incident with her Iphone before she checked on the driver of the black Audi!!!!!! After a couple of minutes the woman in the Audi got out and started taking pictures with her phone. OK, nobody was hurt and the damage was limited.
You get the feeling that unless the pictures were taken - there was no accident!!!!!!!

That picture taking was for evidence. Otherwise, it one's word against another.

I hope you're being sarcastic but if you're not, what would you do in that situation? Tell the insurance companies word for word that you're involved in an accident and not a fraud?

 

[Pickett Wilson]

"what would you do in that situation?"

Send the police report to the insurance company, like we've done for decades. Insurance companies generally base their decisions on the police report. The damage would be obvious. Would the cell phone photos show who was at fault?

 

[micromontenegro]

I love how all of us act in a superior way, either looking down on that old fool Umberto, or on the masses and their dumb fascination with technology.

Have none of us been in either situation? Personally, I've given lectures where I got annoyed that people buried themselves in their laptop taking notes - I'm not entirely sure why.

Ditto. I stopped lecturing (one of the things I really like doing), and one of my motives was the fact that people now deem adequate to be on the balckberry/iphone/whatever no matter what.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Have none of us been in either situation?

Of course. As with you, many have been on both sides. The problem is that you have to set the rules beforehand, not complain when there are none and people behave in a manner to suit themselves.

If you don't want photographs taken, simply put on the invitation/advertisement: "No photography". If you don't want interruptions, put "All phones must be switched off". Those who can't live with the rules don't attend.

 

[nightfly]

I think someone like Umberto Eco should be flattered that anyone wants to photograph him.

While I very much enjoyed "In the Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum" (the Davinci Code for literate people), I certainly wouldn't need a photograph. It's not like he's Angelina Jolie or something.

There is a bigger idea here I think about how we have voluntarily built a panopticon based on voluntary user submitted data that is more complete and thorough than the most oppressive government could have envisioned. If someone had proposed "checking in" at a location in some distopian sci fi novel we'd probably have balked at it while now people do this for the dubious honor of being "mayor" as well as posting their most intimate thoughts and feelings on a moment by moment basis along with their location and photographs to accompany them.